Biden resisted an onslaught and landed some blows – but the debates leave Democrats with more questions than answers

Better from Biden but Democrats have yet to find 'the one' – which suits Trump

Barack Obama warned in April about the dangers of progressives creating a “circular firing squad”. Nine Democratic presidential candidates did form such a squad at the second Detroit debate on Wednesday night. The problem for current frontrunner Joe Biden – touted by many moderates as the man to take on Donald Trump in 2020 – was that he was at the centre.

Biden came out to fight – and then the desperate brawlers turned on him | Richard Wolffe Read more

California senator Kamala Harris opened fire at him over healthcare. Former housing secretary Julián Castro attacked him on immigration, while New York mayor Bill de Blasio did so over deportations. New Jersey senator Cory Booker took a shot over criminal justice. Washington governor Jay Inslee said his climate change plan lacks urgency. New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand fired old prejudices about working women back at him. Harris blasted him again on race.

At the end of it all, Biden was still standing. For sure, there was blood on the carpet and he could hardly pretend to casually brush dirt off his shoulder. But the former US vice-president’s supporters will be consoled that he survived the onslaught and avoided another flop like the first debates in Miami that could have seen support and donor money drain away.

It made for a very different debate from night one in Detroit when the ideological split in the Democratic party was put on full display among 10 other candidates. That was an age-old philosophical argument about pragmatism versus daring to dream. Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders formed a progressive double act to parry assaults from the centre.

On Wednesday, however, the tables were turned as the moderate Biden had a target painted on his back and the left took aim. Only he was all alone. But after his lacklustre performance in the first debate, the 76-year-old was better prepared, more engaged and spoke longer than his rivals, even getting in the old Bidenism “a bunch of malarkey”, even if he did fade somewhat as time went on.

As if anticipating fight night as hyped by CNN, Biden, like an ageing boxer, told Harris, “Go easy on me, kid,” when they first took the stage and shook hands, she smiling and placing a hand on his right arm. She later brushed off the comment.

Co-moderator Dana Bash immediately put it to Harris that Biden’s campaign had called her healthcare plan “a have-it-every-which-way approach” and just part of a confusing pattern of equivocating. The California senator retorted: “Well, they’re probably confused because they’ve not read it.”

Bash then asked Biden to weigh in. “To be very blunt and to be very straightforward, you can’t beat President Trump with double-talk on this plan,” he said.

Next up was immigration. Castro defended his plan to decriminalise unauthorised border crossings.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Kamala Harris and Joe Biden clashed over healthcare. Photograph: Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images

Biden, who disagrees, said, “I never heard him talk about any of this,” when Castro was a member of Obama’s cabinet.

Castro responded: “Yeah, first of all, Mr Vice-President, it looks like one of us has learned the lessons of the past and one of us hasn’t. What we need are politicians who actually have some guts on this issue.”

Then De Blasio, the mayor of New York, repeatedly demanded to know if Biden had counselled Obama against sweeping deportations of undocumented immigrants. Biden dodged. De Blasio admonished: “Mr Vice-President, you want to be president of the United States, you need to be able to answer the tough questions.”

Still Biden declined to answer. “I was vice-president. I am not the president. I keep my recommendation to him in private.”

Booker seized the moment: “Mr Vice-President, you can’t have it both ways. You invoke President Obama more than anybody in this campaign. You can’t do it when it’s convenient and then dodge it when it’s not.”

Whereas Harris landed the most telling blow against Biden in last month’s debate, this time she had to deal with some incoming fire of her own, and the honours went to Booker instead. He sparred with Biden over his role in the Bill Clinton-era crime bill that mandated longer jail sentences for some crimes.

“We have a system right now that’s broken,” Booker said. “And if you want to compare records, and frankly I’m shocked that you do, I’m happy to do that. Because all the problems that he is talking about he created.”

Unlike last time, Biden had come armed with opposition research and took Booker to task over his record as mayor of Newark, New Jersey. But Booker was more agile on his feet and seemed to win the round. “Mr Vice-President, there’s a saying in my community: you’re dipping into the Kool-Aid and you don’t even know the flavour. You need to come to the city of Newark and see the reforms that we put in place.”

Biden rolled with the punches, however. He did not deliver blistering rebukes but nor did he crumple or fold. He did enough to reassure his supporters and perhaps even earn sympathy from those who saw him as getting ganged up on.

And still they came. There was Inslee, the governor of Washington, on his specialist subject, climate change. “The science tells us we have to get off coal in 10 years. Your plan does not do that. We have to have off of fossil fuels in our electrical grid in 15. Your plan simply does not do that.”

Biden came out to fight – and then the desperate brawlers turned on him | Richard Wolffe Read more

Biden snapped: “No, I didn’t say that.”

Never slow to start a playground fight, CNN reminded Biden and Harris about their past battle on race, bussing and segregationists. Harris said: “Let’s be clear about this. Had those segregationists their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate, Cory Booker would not be a member of the United States Senate, and Barack Obama would not have been in the position to nominate him to the title he now holds.”

But in a measure of how Biden was better prepared this time, he had brought some ammunition of his own. “When Senator Harris was attorney general for eight years in the state of California, there were two of the most segregated school districts in the country, in Los Angeles and in San Francisco,” he said. “I didn’t see a single solitary time she brought a case against them to desegregate them.”

The two nights in Detroit left Democrats with more questions than answers, contemplating a field fragmented across age, gender, race and policy. Biden is bruised again but marches on, and supporters outside the Twittersphere especially are unlikely to have been shaken. But what he is clearly not is a young, dynamic and inspiring Democratic figure such as John F Kennedy, Bill Clinton or Barack Obama.

Despite having 20 candidates on stage, a few more waiting the wings, the party has still not found the one. And that will suit Donald Trump just fine.