Democratic debate: Pete Buttigieg's moments that mattered

Former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg held a moderate amount of spotlight in the final Democratic presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on Tuesday, competing to hold the stage with fellow front-runners Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren.

Though he did not offer direct answers at times — billionaire Tom Steyer, who barely qualified for the race, swooped in at one point to detail exactly how he would battle climate change — Buttigieg still garnered applause.

Here are some main takeaways:

Emphasizing military experience

Buttigieg once again drew on his military experience in an emotional appeal to limit troops in the Middle East. He recalled the day he departed for Afghanistan and watched a fellow lieutenant say goodbye to his family.

“His 1½-year-old boy was toddling after him, not understanding why his father wasn’t turning back to scoop him up,” he said. “And it took all the strength he had not to turn around and look at his boy one more time. That is happening by the thousands right now.”

“My perspective is to ensure that that will never happen when there is an alternative as commander in chief,” Buttigieg continued.

He even garnered a short round of applause after noting his experience makes him prepared to battle President Donald Trump.

“I’m ready to take on Donald Trump because when he gets to the tough talk and the chest-thumping, he’ll have to stand next to an American war veteran and explain how he pretended bone spurs made him ineligible to serve,” he said.

Although Sen. Amy Klobuchar had previously criticized Buttigieg’s lack of experience in the past, she didn’t take the bait for another fight on Tuesday night.

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“I’ve been very clear that I respect the mayor’s experience very much in the military; I just have different experience,” she said. “I’ve been in the U.S. Senate for over 12 years and I think what you want in a president is someone who has dealt with these life and death issues and who has made decisions.”

Criticism over Medicare

Buttigieg touted his Medicare plan — Medicare for All Who Want It — as a common-sense move that involves two steps: allowing Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and rolling back corporate tax cuts. His campaign estimates it is costing $1.5 trillion over a decade.

It’s a price tag that Sen. Elizabeth Warren didn’t buy. She chalked both Buttigieg and Biden's health care plans up to a “small improvement.”

“That’s why it is that they cost so much less because by themselves, they’re not going to be enough to cover prescriptions for 36 million people who can’t afford to get them filled,” said Warren, who instead pushed for building on the Affordable Care Act and offering no or low-cost health care to everyone.

Buttigieg dismissed Warren’s critiques of his plan as a small one, noting that it would take on the cost of prescriptions and set an out-of-pocket monthly expense cap of $250.

“We’ve got to move past the Washington mentality that suggests that the bigness of plans only consists of how many trillions of dollars they put through the treasury,” he said. “That the boldness of a plan only consists of how any Americans it can alienate. This would be a game changer.”

Tracing his roots back to South Bend

Buttigieg made multiple references to his Midwest, industrial town of South Bend, noting at one point that this prepares him to battle President Donald Trump over economic matters.

“I am from this exact kind of industrial Midwestern community that he pretends to speak to and has proven to turn his back on — and guided that community through a historic transformation when at the beginning of the decade, (when) I took office, we were described as a dying city,” he said.

How Buttigieg would pay for: $5.7 trillion in federal spending

Opposing free college for all

Buttigieg defended his stance against free public college for all — a plan that Warren and Sanders have touted — on the basis that the children of the super wealthy should still pay for higher education.

He noted that his plan would still make college free for the majority of Americans.

“But if you’re in that top income bracket, don’t get me wrong: I still wish you well, I hope you succeed when you go to college; I just need you to go ahead and pay that tuition,” he said. “Because we could be using those dollars for something else. There is a very real choice about what we do with every single taxpayer dollar that we raise.”

Call IndyStar reporter Amelia Pak-Harvey at 317-444-6175 or email her at apakharvey@indystar.com. Follow her on Twitter @AmeliaPakHarvey.