To the Editor:

Re “Barbs Fly as Rival Democrats Confront End of the Beginning” (news analysis, front page, Sept. 13):

I am dismayed once again by the Democratic debates. Here they are arguing with one another over health care and other “progressive” ideas. Instead, they should be debating how they each are going to do the best job undoing and repairing all the damage being inflicted on our country — its environment, its foreign policy, its moral standing, its military, its economy, its public discourse, etc. — by President Trump and the nasty people he has salted throughout the government.

The amount of damage done is formidable, and it’s going to take a Democratic president four years working full time just to correct it. Only then can we begin to try to implement “progressive” ideas.

Chuck Bell

Trinity, Fla.

To the Editor:

As long as the candidates don’t go in some scary and exploitable direction such as “open borders,” which past Democratic nominees and presidents, including President Obama, have strongly opposed, and as long as they are agreeable to one another on the stage and together appeal to the swing voters who watch — for three hours at a time — their strong and united takedown of our hateful and crass president, then these debates can only work to the good of all.

If only in 2016 we had had as many as these 10 strong and amiable Democratic candidates for the nomination.