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A few takeaways from last night’s debate:

I thought Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and Steve Bullock did the most effective jobs of delivering their messages (which isn’t to say I agreed with everything they said). You can find my full ratings, and those of other Times columnists, here. The consensus winner, based on our grades: Warren. The consensus loser: John Hickenlooper.

I know that primaries always involve intraparty debates, but the Democrats really are fumbling their health care message. It should be easy for them: President Trump has repeatedly tried to take away people’s health insurance, while Democrats favor popular measures to increase coverage and reduce costs. But the party is engaged in a needless — and largely theoretical — debate about whether to expand Medicare gradually or radically. As Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report tweeted: “A bunch of Ds — especially those who won in ’18 — are likely shaking their heads as they watched Dem candidates for POTUS debate health care for almost an hour w/out spending any time on Trump/GOP repeal of Obamacare & pre-existing condition protection.”

The CNN moderators seemed more focused on encouraging feuding among the candidates than illuminating their policy positions, as Bloomberg’s Jonathan Bernstein noted.

“So far, the big picture on the debate is the leading Democrats will criminalize private health insurance and decriminalize unauthorized border crossing. It’s a very different theory of the electorate than Democrats deployed in 08 or 12 or 18,” Vox’s Ezra Klein said on Twitter , after the start of the debate. Klein’s colleague Matt Yglesias made a similar point: “If you stop and think about it for a minute, there is probably some wisdom to be gained from the reality that the biggest proponents of progressive policies on the stage hold safe blue Senate seats from New England while the former governors of Montana and Colorado are skeptical.” Kirsten Powers, USA Today: “Moderates need to up their game. [They] did terrible job selling their worldview which seems to be ‘we can’t be bold and win.’”

Jim Newell, Slate: “Wouldn’t it have been more useful — and less time-consuming than watching a total of six hours of debate across two nights — to have watched Warren and Sanders have out their differences with Joe Biden himself?”

Tonight, I’ll be most interested to see whether Joe Biden tries to respond to the arguments that Sanders and Warren made last night, even though the two of them won’t be onstage with him.

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