Elizabeth Warren, the highest-polling candidate on the stage last night, didn’t deign to mention Trump at all during the debate. (Warren, though no fan of Trump, offers structural critiques of flaws in American society that predate his presidency.) Cory Booker even bragged that Trump had signed a bill he sponsored.

Somewhere the Resistance was dozing off on a couch.

The hesitation to attack Trump head-on was especially glaring on questions that were unavoidably about him. When the moderator Chuck Todd asked candidates what they would do if the House did not impeach Trump, the hopefuls onstage—who had been testily jockeying for time all night—suddenly became far more restrained, generous, and willing to let their rivals speak.

O’Rourke, who has publicly endorsed impeachment, had the misfortune to draw that particular question; he filibustered with a meandering anecdote about a painting of George Washington. John Delaney, who had the only slightly better fortune to get it next, pivoted away as quickly as he could.

“I support Speaker Pelosi’s decisions she is making as speaker. I think she knows more about the decision as to whether to impeach the president than any of the 2020 candidates combined,” he said. “No one is above the law, and this president, who is lawless, should not be above the law. I will tell you the one thing when you are out doing as much campaigning as I have done, 400 events and all 99 counties in Iowa, this is not what American people ask us about. They want to know about health care and pharmaceutical prices and creating jobs in their communities.”

While Delaney name-checked Pelosi only in the first half of that answer, the second half bears her strategic imprint. During the 2018 midterms, many Democratic Party candidates for Congress chose to speak about bread-and-butter issues such as health care rather than make their races about Trump. They were very successful: Democrats won a huge victory in the House, restoring Pelosi to the speakership. Since taking over, Pelosi has tried to keep walking that road, dampening cries for impeachment and trying to return attention to a progressive policy agenda.

And why should the candidates focus on Trump? Isn’t this just the Beltway-obsessed perspective of pundits like me? Not really. Polls consistently show that voters are eager to choose a candidate who can beat Trump. They want candidates to talk about beating Trump. When asked to remove “electability”—i.e., the ability to beat Trump—from their choice of candidate, their selections shift significantly, suggesting that their focus on beating Trump is a leading factor shaping their choices. The voters Delaney is seeing at his stops in Iowa may be sincere, but they’re not all that representative of the Democratic-primary electorate.

The candidates, or at least the ones onstage last night, have chosen to stick with the successful 2018 Democratic strategy. (Two of the candidates debating tonight, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, have been more eager to spar with the president.) That’s intriguing and counterintuitive, and not merely because it indicates a belief that the candidates know what voters want better than voters do, as they self-report to pollsters.