[ad_1]
LOS ANGELES — Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., was repeatedly pushed onto the defensive in the sixth Democratic presidential debate on Thursday night, as several of his rivals challenged his political ascent by bluntly questioning his fund-raising practices and credentials for the presidency in a contentious and deeply substantive forum.
Mr. Buttigieg has risen rapidly in the polls in Iowa and New Hampshire in recent months, after his persistent attacks on Senator Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and her support for single-payer health care. For many weeks, Mr. Buttigieg, a municipal official who at 37 would be the youngest president in history, escaped corresponding criticism from his fellow Democrats.
That changed here in Los Angeles on Thursday evening in a debate that unfolded in the shadow of President Trump’s impeachment. Ms. Warren struck back at Mr. Buttigieg for his courting of wealthy donors at private fund-raisers — including a recent event at a so-called wine cave — and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota expressed clear skepticism of Mr. Buttigieg’s electoral track record and public accomplishments. Taken together, it amounted to the most strenuous challenge so far to a relative political newcomer who has captivated many Democratic voters with his soaring rhetoric and intellectual mien.
Ms. Klobuchar, a three-term senator, rebuked Mr. Buttigieg most pointedly for dismissing the value of experience in Washington. She gilded her attack with praise for other candidates, hailing Ms. Warren for designing a new financial regulatory agency, former Vice President Joseph R. Biden Jr. for directing vast resources to cancer research and Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont for championing veterans.
“While you dismiss committee hearings, I think this experience works,” Ms. Klobuchar told Mr. Buttigieg, noting that despite his claims to electoral strength, he lost campaigns for state treasurer in Indiana and for the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee.
Mr. Buttigieg parried the criticism from all directions, accusing Ms. Warren of seeking to impose “purity tests” for a fund-raising model — eschewing elite donors — that she did not follow as a Senate candidate. He also invoked his experience in the military as proof of his seasoning, and cited his identity as a gay man who campaigned for office in “Mike Pence’s Indiana” as proof of his political mettle.
But his candidacy appeared to enter a new stage over the course of the evening, as his image as an articulate political wunderkind faced a rigorous test that is unlikely to ease up anytime soon. Even Andrew Yang, the former tech executive who has been a good-natured presence in every debate so far, got in a light jab at Mr. Buttigieg by alluding to candidates who must “shake the money tree in the wine cave.”
The Democratic primary battle as a whole seemed to be at a transition point on Thursday, as a smaller number of candidates engaged for about two and a half hours in a wide-ranging debate over matters of global diplomacy, economic prosperity and presidential impeachment. Four top-tier candidates remain in the race, with Mr. Biden leading in the national polls, followed by Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren, and Mr. Buttigieg surging in the earliest primary and caucus states.
Less than two months before the Iowa caucuses, the race remains highly fluid, with considerable room for movement not just among the top few candidates but among the underdogs as well. Mr. Buttigieg has become such a target for his rivals because of his growing strength in Iowa especially, a state that most of the candidates onstage have been counting on as a springboard to help them overtake Mr. Biden nationally.
Mr. Buttigieg was not the only candidate who became a focal point for criticism. Late in the evening, Mr. Sanders delivered perhaps the most concerted attack he has delivered in any debate, challenging Mr. Biden over his support for the Iraq war and for his opposition to “Medicare for all”-style health care. For much of the evening, however, Mr. Biden seemed to recede from the foreground as other candidates battled around him.
For the second consecutive month, the Democrats debated amid highly public impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump. And for the second consecutive month, the gravity of impeachment appeared at times to restrain the candidates or soften their rhetoric. For all their sharp arguments, the candidates uniformly reserved their harshest attacks for Mr. Trump, and several of the Democrats repeatedly interjected to plead for a mood of civility and cooperation within the party.
Every candidate voiced support for the House Democrats who voted on Wednesday to impeach Mr. Trump. But without exception, the Democrats also seemed to anticipate Mr. Trump’s acquittal in the Republican-controlled Senate; when asked how they would persuade the country to support Mr. Trump’s ouster, the leading Democrats all explained instead how they would approach the task of defeating him next November.
Mr. Buttigieg nudged voters’ attention to the general election, arguing, “No matter what happens in the Senate, it is up to us in 2020.”
A sterner voice of skepticism came from Mr. Yang, the former tech executive mounting an underdog campaign, who described impeachment as a distraction from more important economic issues. Suggesting Mr. Trump’s acquittal in the Senate was a foregone conclusion, Mr. Yang likened it to “a ballgame where you know what the score is going to be.”
Democrats, he said, should focus instead on offering a “new positive vision for the country.”
But as the debate neared its halfway point, the tensions that had been building for weeks between Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg over campaign funding and transparency reached a boiling point, playing out in a strikingly sharp and at times personal exchange.
“So the mayor just recently had a fund-raiser that was held in a wine cave full of crystals,” Ms. Warren said, adding that “billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States.”
Mr. Buttigieg protested: “You know, according to Forbes magazine, I’m literally the only person on this stage who is not a millionaire or a billionaire. So, this is important. This is the problem with issuing purity tests you cannot yourself pass.”
“Senator,” he added, “Your net worth is 100 times mine.”
“I do not sell access to my time,” Ms. Warren rebuked him.
Their exchange was curtailed by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. Sensing an opening to cast herself as above the fray and focused on party unity, she jumped in with some humor.
“I did not come here to listen to this argument,” she said. “I came here to make a case for progress. And I have never even been to a wine cave. I have been to the wind cave in South Dakota.”
The ideological clash between Mr. Buttigieg and Ms. Warren continued over which Americans should qualify for free college. Mr. Buttigieg said that “if you’re in that lucky top 10 percent, I still wish you well, don’t get me wrong, I just want you to go ahead and pay your own tuition.”
“I very much agree with Senator Warren on raising more tax revenue from millionaires and billionaires,” Mr. Buttigieg added. “I just don’t agree on the part about spending it on millionaires and billionaires when it comes to their college tuition.”
Ms. Warren, who supports free tuition at public colleges and canceling most student debt, was ready with a quick rejoinder: “The mayor wants billionaires to pay one tuition for their own kids. I want a billionaire to pay enough to cover tuition for all of our kids.”
Fault lines also emerged quickly on matters of the economy, with two candidates — Ms. Klobuchar and Mr. Sanders — diverging on the merits of Mr. Trump’s new trade deal with Mexico and Canada, which the House approved only hours earlier. And in the first stage of the debate, there were hints of friction over proposals by Mr. Sanders and Ms. Warren to create broad new college tuition benefits and to impose new taxes on the country’s largest private fortunes.
Mr. Trump provided a backdrop for the forum, and not only because of his newly embattled status and his anticipated victory on trade. In a series of richly substantive exchanges, on issues such as climate change, press freedom and American relations with China and Israel, the candidates held him up as the embodiment of all they would not do with the presidency.
The Democrats were particularly unsparing with regard to the president’s foreign policy record, calling him an ally to tyrants and a figure of fun on the international stage. Ms. Klobuchar alluded to Mr. Trump’s tempestuous departure from a recent NATO summit after a video surfaced of several foreign leaders joking about him. “He is so thin-skinned that he walked, he quit,” she said, adding, “America doesn’t quit.”
Several of the leading candidates vowed to take a more coordinated and forceful approach to dealing with China, including on human rights. Mr. Biden said he would seek to levy United Nations sanctions against the Chinese government for rounding up Muslim Uighurs in camps, while Mr. Buttigieg said he was open to the possibility of boycotting the 2022 Olympics in Beijing.
“We’re not looking for a war,” Mr. Biden said, “but we’ve got to make clear: We are a Pacific power and we are not going to walk away.”
Before they clashed over campaign fund-raising, Ms. Warren and Mr. Buttigieg quickly sketched out two sharply divergent approaches to improving the economy and addressing inequality.
“Oh, they’re just wrong!” Ms. Warren bristled when asked about concerns regarding her tax plans, going on to defend her wealth tax proposal, which would affect the richest Americans to help pay for significantly expanding the social safety net.
Soon after, Mr. Buttigieg took a thinly veiled swipe at that approach, emphasizing the importance of “promises that we can keep without the kind of taxation that economists tell us could hurt the economy.”
“We’ve got to break out of the Washington mind set that measures the bigness of an idea by the trillions of dollars it adds to the budget or the boldness of an idea by how many Americans it can antagonize,” he said.
If the lack of racial diversity onstage was a source of embarrassment to some Democrats, the subject of gender came up repeatedly, thanks in part to former President Barack Obama. A moderator prompted Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders to respond to Mr. Obama’s recent comments that the world would be better off run by women, rather than by “old men, not getting out of the way.” Mr. Biden responded lightly, “I’m going to guess he wasn’t talking about me.”
But gender is likely to be a central dynamic in the final phases of the race. When Ms. Warren was asked to address the reality that she, like Mr. Biden and Mr. Sanders, would be the oldest president ever inaugurated, her reply drew loud applause: “I’d also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated.”
[ad_2]
Source link
