There were moments of clarity from Beto O’Rourke and Cory Booker intermixed in the chaos and weirdness

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

In a format infamous for clamor and cacophony – throw 10 politicians onstage and drill them for hours on umpteen topics – the third Democratic presidential primary debate on Thursday yielded, against all odds, moments of clarity.

Former Texas congressman Beto O’Rourke declared: “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”

Senator Amy Klobuchar called the climate crisis “the existential crisis of our time” – and drew what sounded like cries of “Amen!” from the crowd.

Senator Cory Booker called the sitting president a racist, while former housing secretary Julián Castro said Trump “inspired” a recent mass shooting.

Biden clashes with Warren and Sanders in lively Democratic debate Read more

And the crowd hooted at the intrigue when Castro, at 44 the second youngest candidate onstage, attacked the 76-year-old frontrunner, former vice-president Joe Biden, coming close to calling him senile.

“Are you forgetting what you said two minutes ago?” Castro interrogated Biden over an answer about health care policy. “I can’t believe you’re forgetting what you said two minutes ago!”

The transcript seemed to vindicate Biden. But the clash helped to define a night of brutal attacks, fast-paced policy mastication and enough weird unscripted moments – businessman Andrew Yang, the only non-professional politician onstage, announced a raffle on his website – to raise the question of whether the third debate could shake up this race.

After all, the contest had seemed to glide listlessly through the end of summer, with Biden easily on top in the polls, senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders somewhere behind him, and the rest of the field below. The preservation of that pecking order could now depend on how voters respond to Warren’s magisterial replies to questions on topics from public education to healthcare – “I know what’s broken, I know how to fix it, and I’m going to lead the fight to get it done,” she said – versus Sanders’ peppy defense of his territory as a pioneer in advocating universal healthcare reform. “I wrote the damn bill!” he barked (again).

And while Castro’s attack on Biden might not have landed, the frontrunner repeatedly seemed to fumble the facts: he at one point mistakenly referred to Sanders as the president, he badly botched the name of the Moms Demand Action gun safety group and he said nonviolent offenders shouldn’t be in prison when he (apparently, aides later said) meant nonviolent drug offenders.

When he got in trouble, Biden got punchier, and sometimes wilder, with an answer on education confusingly swerving into the previous topic, Venezuela and foreign policy.

Castro, the reliable foil, was right there with a smirk and a quip: “That’s quite a lot.”

But for all the psychic concentration over the nearly three-hour debate on the three frontrunners, some of the biggest moments of the night were delivered by candidates who, until now, have been waiting in the wings.

Play Video 3:05 US election 2020: highlights from the third Democratic presidential debate – video

It was O’Rourke who delivered a blistering attack on Donald Trump as a racist. “We have a white supremacist in the White House,” O’Rourke said, in one of the night’s biggest applause lines, “and he poses a mortal threat to people of color all across this country.”

Booker echoed the attack, but paired it with a call to action. “We know Donald Trump’s a racist,” Booker said, “but there is no Red Badge of courage for calling him that.”

If the Democrats had seemed to take their rhetorical gloves off, there were still enough moments of alternating agreement and chaos to deliver on the night’s promise (or threat) of an incoherent policy stew.

Klobuchar contributed her own Trump joke – “Houston we have a problem” – and found a way to turn Sanders’ health careline against him. “While Bernie wrote the bill, I read the bill,” she said. “And on page eight it says that we will no longer have private insurance as we know it.”

But, Castro aside, the cross-stage sniping was mostly gentle. After Yang announced his raffle – $1,000 a month for 10 lucky families – mayor Pete Buttigieg quipped: “It’s original, I’ll give you that.”

But if the top trio of Biden, Sanders, and Warren is to be derailed, the candidate who seems best positioned to do it – Senator Kamala Harris – decided to do it not by attacking Biden, as she memorably did in the first debate, but by attacking Trump.

Repeatedly Harris went after Trump, including over the El Paso shooting of 3 August: “Obviously he didn’t pull the trigger, but he’s certainly been tweeting out the ammunition.”

Typical of the scattered, uneven but memorably eventful debate evening, Harris also launched attacks on Trump that were more offbeat – and ultimately awkward.

“He reminds me of that guy in the Wizard of Oz. You know when you pull back the curtain he’s a really small dude?” Harris told ABC News moderator George Stephanopoulos, who’s not tall.

“I’m not even taking the bait,” Stephanopoulos said.

“Aw, George,” Harris said. “It’s not about you.”