Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (right) said Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders were acting like Republicans by taking away private health insurance. At right is former Rep. John Delaney. | Justin Sullivan/Getty Images 2020 democratic debates Moderates warn that Sanders, Warren risk throwing 2020 to Trump Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, Rep. Tim Ryan and ex-Rep. John Delaney spent the debate saying liberal policies would alienate swing voters.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock tried to pump the brakes Tuesday night after watching the more progressive Democrats stake out left-leaning territory on border crossings, health care for undocumented immigrants and “Medicare for All” over three debates.

“Look, I think this is part of the discussion that shows how often these debates are detached from people's lives,” said Bullock, who has won three statewide elections in Donald Trump territory. “We got a hundred thousand people showing up at the border right now. If we decriminalize entry, if we give health care to everyone, we'll have multiples of that.”


Worried that the other Democrats were over-promising or taking positions out of step with the majority of the country, Bullock, Rep. Tim Ryan of Ohio and former Rep. John Delaney of Maryland banded together in an unofficial moderate alliance in Detroit, said that the blue-state progressives at center stage Tuesday night — Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — are making it tougher to beat President Trump in 2020, with his campaign already attacking Democrats over the issues.

Warren disputed Bullock’s criticism on decriminalizing illegal border crossings, saying the United States needs to take away legal tools that allowed Trump to separate children from parents seeking asylum while seeking expanded legal immigration and fixing the border crisis.

“A big part of how we do that is we do not play into Donald Trump's hands,” Warren responded. “He wants to stir up the crisis at the border because that's his overall message: ‘If there's anything wrong in your life, blame them.’”

But Bullock struck back: “But you are playing into Donald Trump's hands.”

“The challenge isn't that it's a criminal offense to cross the border,” Bullock continued. “The challenge is that Donald Trump is president and using this to rip families apart. A sane immigration system needs a sane leader, and we can do that without decriminalizing, providing health care for everyone.”

The divisions weren’t limited to health care or immigration, as the candidates divided on free trade, the “Green New Deal” energy plan and free college tuition, which Bullock called an example of “wish-list economics.”

When it comes to health care and immigration, polling suggests that Bullock’s politics might be a better for a general election. But in a Democratic primary, Warren’s stance is more popular with the party’s voters.

A recent Marist poll showed 64 percent of Democrats supported Medicare for All that completely eliminated private health insurance, while 31 percent opposed it. But 54 percent of voters overall said they would oppose such a change. On decriminalizing border crossings, Democrats were split, with 45 percent in favor and 47 percent opposed. But overall, voters oppose punishing illegal border crossings under civil law instead of criminal law, by a margin of 66 percent to 27 percent.

Ryan, who got relatively little airtime in last month’s debate compared to Tuesday’s showdown, also worried about incentivizing illegal immigration, saying migrants should come legally and “at least ring the doorbell.”

“As far as healthcare goes, undocumented people can buy health care, too. I mean, everyone else in America is paying for their health care,” Ryan said. “I don't think it's a stretch for us to ask undocumented people in the country to also pay for health care.”

Sanders, however, was consistent about his views on the issue: “When I talk about health care as a human right, that applies to all people in this country, and under a Medicare for All single-payer system, we could afford to do that.”

Earlier in the debate, after CNN moderator Jake Tapper asked about whether Medicare for All would result in middle-class tax increases, Sanders accused him of using “Republican talking points.”

But fellow Democrats, including Delaney, have also launched attacks at Sanders’ health care vision.

“We can go down the road that Sen. Sanders and Sen. Warren want to take us with bad policies like Medicare for All, free everything, and impossible promises that will turn off independent voters and get Trump reelected,” said Delaney, noting he had run a health care company — a fact that was used against him in the debate.

Bullock said Warren and Sanders were acting like Republicans by taking away private health insurance. Warren replied that Democrats want to expand health care, accusing Bullock of fear-mongering like a Republican.

But other candidates said that Sanders and Warren weren’t properly weighing the political impact of their stances. Activist and lecturer Marianne Williamson, who said she’s “normally way over there with Bernie and Elizabeth,” said she was concerned that their health care position “will make it harder to win.”

“You might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump,” said former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper.

And Ryan, who hails from Youngstown, Ohio, worried about how the policies would play in the Midwest, where Democrats have lost some of their one-time base in the labor movement to Trump.

“We’ve talked about taking private health insurance away from union members in the industrial Midwest, we’ve talked about decriminalizing the border, and we've talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care,” Ryan said. “I quite frankly don't think that that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.”