Debate throws Democratic race open

Sebastian Smith -

The battle for the Democratic White House nomination was thrown wide open after a star debate performance by former prosecutor Kamala Harris, while President Donald Trump licked his chops over the opposition party’s sharp leftward turn.

Joe Biden, vice-president under still highly popular ex-president Barack Obama, came in as the frontrunner but the 76-year-old stumbled when attacked by younger rivals in the second of two televised debates in Miami, each featuring 10 candidates.

As the only black woman in the 2020 race, Harris already stands out, but she stole the show by attacking Biden’s record on race relations, leaving him literally speechless.

Harris, a senator and former attorney general of California, pinned down Biden on his past opposition to school busing programmes that forced integration of segregated school systems in the 1970s — and Biden faltered.

“My time is up,” he finally said. Although he’d meant that he had run out of the few seconds granted by moderators on the crowded debate stage, his words went viral on Twitter as a symbolic admission that he is a man of yesteryear in a party demanding radical change. The radical spirit was on full display both on Thursday and in the first debate on Wednesday, showing the barriers facing a centrist like Biden on the way to the nomination.

Harris and popular self-described socialist Bernie Sanders joined lesser players in supporting, to various degrees, free healthcare for all, forgiving of student debt, restrictions on private firearms, and an end to Trump’s tough crackdown against illegal immigration.

At last Wednesday’s debate, leftist Senator Elizabeth Warren led the same charge.

While these issues are at the heart of what most agree are the deepest problems in the United States, they are also notorious ideological minefields and never have so many presidential candidates offered such uncompromising solutions.

Trump, on the other side of the world at the Japan G20 summit, gloated.

“All Democrats just raised their hands for giving millions of illegal aliens unlimited healthcare. How about taking care of American Citizens first!?” he tweeted.

“That’s the end of that race!”

It’s too early to say whether Biden, an affable, but gaffe-prone figure, will see his big polling lead melt away.

Trump certainly thinks so.

“Not a good day for Sleepy Joe or Crazy Bernie. One is exhausted, the other is nuts,” Trump summarised with his characteristic insults on Twitter.

But the rough treatment, which also included Sanders recalling that Biden had voted for going to war in Iraq, could instead harden the former VP ahead of what will be a brutal battle with Trump.

“While Biden didn’t soar, we doubt he was fatally damaged by any of this,” veteran politics watcher Larry Sabato said in his post-game analysis.

“Nonetheless, as frontrunner, Biden can look forward to many more attacks. Whether this sharpens Biden for the campaign against Trump (should he win the nomination) or deconstructs Biden on his way to losing the Democratic nod, we cannot guess.” Despite an impressive resume and compelling personal story as a black woman who rose to the top, Harris, 54, has struggled to gain traction in a field dominated by two elderly white men — Biden

and Sanders — and also featuring the intense Warren.

Thursday night, she broke free.

In what could only have been a carefully rehearsed attack, drawing on all her experience as a courtroom prosecutor, she first disarmed Biden by saying she was sure he was no racist.

But then she began to question his history on the fraught issue, cornering him with the point that he’d once opposed busing. In fact, busing was hugely controversial and not all opposition was motivated by wanting racial segregation. But Harris, her voice quivering with emotion, had an ambush to complete. — AFP