While the first debate was well-organized and (surprisingly?) substantive, the second debate — despite having bigger names — was messy and at times highly detached from policy specifics.

Still, there were a variety of important points that deserve some added context.

Bernie Sanders: Funding Medicare For All

GUTHRIE: You have called for big new government benefits like universal healthcare and free college. In a recent interview you said you suspected that Americans would be ‘delighted’ to pay more taxes for things like that. My question to you is will taxes go up for the middle class in a Sanders administration? And if so how do you sell that to voters? SANDERS: It is time for change, real change. And by that I mean that healthcare in my view is a human right and we have got to pass a Medicare For All single-payer system. Under that system, by the way, the vast majority of the people in this country will be paying significantly less for healthcare than they are right now. I believe that education is the future for this country and that is why I believe that we must make public colleges and universities tuition-free and eliminate student debt and we do that by placing a tax on Wall Street.

I’d give this answer a “C” grade for Sanders.

He does hit his populist central message — which is highly popular, according to issue-by-issue polling. But there’s an argument Bernie has to make here to be effective: taxes on the middle class will go up, but that will be significantly outweighed by the savings Americans will receive by not paying a dime for basic medical care.

How much would the average American (making $30,000 in income and spending $4,600 per year on healthcare) save overall under Bernie’s tax plan and Medicare For All package? Estimates vary, but it would be somewhere around $4,500 in savings per year.

This is because while income taxes may increase, private taxes — essential expenditures on healthcare to insurance companies — would be almost entirely eliminated.

If I were Sanders, I’d have said something along the lines of this: “under my plan, you’ll be able to visit your doctor without paying a dime, without worrying about going into medical debt, and without being forced to sacrifice the health of your family to save money on healthcare. Yes, your may see a moderate tax increase, but you won’t pay anything in premiums, deductibles, or co-pays. This would save you an average of $4,500 per year overall. That’s $4,500 more in your pocketbook you can spend on food, on housing, and on your children.”

This answer would turn a tough situation into a political win for Bernie.

Kamala Harris: Paying for Big Proposals

GUTHRIE: Senator Harris, there’s a lot of talk in this primary about new government benefits such as student loan cancellation, free college, healthcare and more. Do you think that Democrats have a responsibility to explain how they will pay for every proposal? HARRIS: Well, let me tell you something. I hear that question, but where was that question when the Republicans and Donald Trump passed a tax bill that benefits the top 1 percent and the biggest corporations in this country, contributing at least $1 trillion to the debt of America, which middle-class families will pay for one way or another.

This is a great response. Although there may be reasons to doubt Harris’ progressive credentials, she is undeniably an incredibly skilled communicator, and here she shows a strong ability to make foundational progressive arguments.

Harris could have also mentioned the trillions of tax dollars given to the military to perpetuate offensive wars — although it would have been somewhat ironic, considering she voted alongside Warren to give Trump a $700 billion military budget in 2018.

Andrew Yang: Universal Basic Income

DIAZ-BALART: Mr. Yang, your signature policy is to give every adult in the United States $1,000 a month, no questions asked. I think that’s like $3.2 trillion a year. How would you do that? YANG: If we had a value added tax at even half the European level it would generate over 800 billion in new revenue, which combined with the money in our hands it would be the trickle up economy from our people, families and communities up…We’d save money on things like incarceration, homelessness services, [and] emergency room healthcare.

Yang’s messaging in this response is substantive, but he seems to assume that Americans have a decent understanding of what universal basic income is. Most don’t. Yang should have gone over the basics of his plan (which would give $1,000 a month to every American adult) at the start of his response.

Many on the left criticize how Yang would pay for his universal basic income plan: a value-added tax (a modified sales tax) and cutting welfare for recipients of the dividend.

I think these criticisms are legitimate — if Yang were to focus his taxes on income and capital gains instead of consumption, his plan would do less damage to low-income consumers.

Still, a lot of progressives argue that they wouldn’t support Yang’s plan at all due to the VAT and welfare cuts. This seems too far. If a family of four (with two parents, each receiving $1,000 a month) currently receives $500 in monthly TANF benefits, $400 in monthly SNAP benefits, and has to spend an additional $200 on products each month as a result of the VAT, they’d still come away with a net gain of $900 per month.

Although highly flawed, Yang’s plan is one of the most impactful proposals on the table to genuinely improve life for low-income Americans.

Pete Buttigieg: Medicare For All

HOLT: Who here would abolish their private health insurance in favor of a government run plan? [Sanders and Harris raise their hands]

Again, note the misleading framing.

BUTTIGIEG: Look, everybody who says Medicare For All, every person in politics who allows that phrase to escape their lips has a responsibility to explain how you’re actually supposed to get from here to there. Now here’s how I would do it. It’s very similar. I would call it Medicare For All Who Want It. You take something like Medicare, a flavor of that, and you make it available on the exchanges. People can buy in. And then if people like us are right, that will be not only a more inclusive plan, but a more efficient plan than any of the corporate answers out there.

This isn’t even close to accurately representing the healthcare debate.

What Buttigieg is describing — creating a government-run healthcare program that consumers can choose to buy into — is essentially a public option. Joe Biden later advocated for the same plan.

While a public option would allow the government plan to compete with private insurance plans — surely a positive step in the right direction — it is nowhere near being as “inclusive” or “efficient” as Medicare For All.

Under a public option, competition between public and private plans would reduce healthcare expenditures through market forces, perhaps to 90 to 95 percent of their original values. This is good, but we would still have millions of people dealing with medical debt and tens of thousands of Americans dying because they can’t afford healthcare. Medicare For All, on the other hand, would make most hospital visits free of charge.

The difference between the two plans is one of life and death — and it makes Medicare For All, not a public option, more “inclusive.”

Regarding which plan is more “efficient,” as I mentioned above, Medicare For All would force hospitals to cut costs to about 90 percent. Additionally — and most significantly — Medicare For All could save up to $600 billion per year (!!!) by reducing administrative costs. While Medicare only spends 1.4 percent of its revenue on administrative costs, private insurance companies spend approximately 15 percent of their revenue on overhead.

A public option would make progress on each of these issues, but it wouldn’t entail the systemic overhaul of Medicare For All that makes the plan so efficient.

Joe Biden: Deportations

DIAZ-BALART: The Obama-Biden administration deported more than three million Americans. My question to you is if an individual is living in the United States of America without documents and that is his only offense, should that person be deported? BIDEN: Depending if they committed a major crime, they should be deported.

This is a wild departure from the Obama-Biden Administration’s stance on this issue. According to a recent report, more than 60 percent of detainees in ICE jails have not been convicted of any crimes.

I doubt Biden is arguing that more than half of the deportations that occurred while he was vice president were illegitimate.

Biden continues:

And…President Obama I think did a heck of a job. To compare him to what this guy is doing is absolutely…close to immoral.

This doesn’t really add up. The year with the highest number of deportations of undocumented immigrants on record was not 2017 or 2018 — actually, it was 2012, a year Obama and Biden were manning the executive branch.

Albeit, the Obama Administration didn’t engage in family separation. Still, the Administration piloted a variety of cruel practices, including the Criminal Alien Removal Initiative, which deployed undercover ICE agents to ask citizens in public spaces — including parks and outside grocery stores — to provide their immigration status, then handcuffed them and detained them in vans.

We should be making sure we change the circumstance, as we did, why they would leave in the first place.

This is Biden’s third consecutive fallacious argument. Here’s why:

Biden voted for NAFTA, which caused the Mexican government to scrap its subsidies for corn. This caused nearly two million Mexican farmers to leave the countryside due to the lower corn prices and economic struggles; many migrated to Mexican cities, and some crossed the border into the U.S.

Biden helped write the controversial 1994 crime bill. The bill funded states to build more prisons and incentivized police officers to make more drug-related arrests, escalating the war on drugs. The war on drugs forced drug lords to operate on a black market, leading to an uptick in violent gangs across Latin America. These gangs have helped destabilize the region, contributing to the child migrant crisis we see today.

The Obama-Biden administration aided a violent, right-wing coup in Honduras in 2009. This coup increased poverty and crime in the country, creating conditions that forced many families to migrate to America.

If the goal is to change the circumstances leading to illegal immigration, Biden has done a pretty poor job.

Harris and Biden: Busing

HARRIS: I’m going to now direct this to Vice President Biden…it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and careers on segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. And you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bussed to school every day and that little girl was me. BIDEN: That’s a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists.

This piercing style of attack from Harris, shaped by her career as a prosecutor, is extremely effective. Here, she expertly combines political substance with a vivid personal story.

Biden’s poor response accentuated the impact. In the comments Harris referenced, Biden said he appreciated the “civility” of segregationist senator Herman Talmadge and respected how segregationist James Eastland “never called me boy — he always called me son.”

Arguing that these comments do not constitute “praise” is a difficult case for Biden to make.

HARRIS: But, Vice President Biden, do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose busing in America then? BIDEN: I did not oppose busing in America. What I opposed is busing ordered by the Department of Education.

This was predictably a highly mocked response, because busing ordered by the federal government to integrate schools is exactly what Harris was referencing.

Following the first round of debates, Harris surged from 8 percent to 17 percent in the polls, while Biden fell from 42 to 32. This exchange was the primary reason why.

Sanders: Diversity

CHUCK TODD (host): Democrats are very excited by the diversity of this field on this stage…Are you telling Democratic voters that diversity shouldn’t matter when they make this decision?

This is a pretty horrible question. Chuck Todd is essentially asking why Sanders — the second-highest polling Democrat who offers the furthest left political platform of any candidate — is running for president in the first place. It’s also never mentioned that Sanders would be the first Jewish president.

SANDERS: No, absolutely not. Unlike the Republican Party, we encourage diversity…But in addition to diversity in terms of having more women, more people from the LGBT community, we also have to…ask ourselves a simple question and that is, how come today the worker in the middle of our economy is making no more money than he or she made 45 years ago and that in the last 30 years the top 1 percent has seen a $21 trillion increase in their wealth? We need a party that is diverse but we need a party that has the guts to stand up to the powerful special interests who have so much power over the economic and political life of this country.

Although it’s a tricky question to answer, I think Bernie could have done a better job by replacing some of his “but’s” with some “and’s.”

Here, Bernie has a golden opportunity to explain the connection between economic justice and racial justice. He could have said something along the lines of “I want to improve opportunities for people of color so that people from every race and gender have an equal shot at becoming president. And to do that we need someone in office who will fight for people of color and working class Americans. And we’re going to do that by legalizing marijuana and making sure every American can afford healthcare.”

Again, Bernie’s economic platform is the most racially progressive in the field, as it does more than any other candidate to empower those who are economically marginalized. If Sanders were able to explain that more effectively to voters of color, he’d be able to build a larger coalition.

Biden: Climate Change

MADDOW: Are there significant ways you can cut carbon emissions if you have to do it with no support from Congress? BIDEN: I would immediately insist that we build 500,000 recharging stations throughout the United States of America…so that we can go to a full electric vehicle future by the year 2030. I would make sure that we invested $400 million in new science and technology to be the exporter not only of the green economy but an economy that can create millions of jobs.

Biden’s first point on constructing 500,000 recharging stations seems reasonable (although he offers no explanation of how he’d pay for it).

But although you may have missed it, his second point is comically flawed mathematically. Biden literally argued for an investment of a mere $400 million — which would amount to just 0.01 percent of our annual budget — to combat climate change, possibly the most daunting problem our world is facing.

For an issue that is set to create massive climate refugee crises, is leading to a sixth mass extinction, and is already costing more than $200 billion to the global economy each year, dedicating the budget of Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides to solve the problem seems a bit inadequate.

Climate change requires a trillion-dollar plan, not a million-dolar or even billion-dollar one.

Michael Bennet: Reputation of the U.S.

HOLT: Many fear the current administration has inflicted irrevocable harm on our governing institutions and norms and, in the process, on our reputation abroad. The question is what do you see as important early steps in reversing the damage done? BENNET: First of all, we have to restore our democracy at home. The rest of the world is looking for us for leadership. We have a president who doesn’t believe in the rule of law…and when you’ve got a situation where you have a president who says something happens in the Straits of Hormuz and the whole world doesn’t know whether to believe it or not, that is a huge problem when it comes to the national security of the United States of America.

The framing of Bennet’s response is historically backwards on multiple levels.

First, it’s not just Trump that’s causing people to doubt the U.S.’ claim that Iran initiated the tanker attack in the Strait of Hormuz. It’s decades of foreign policy history. In the 1960s, the U.S. fabricated an attack on a military destroyer in order to foment support for war in Vietnam. In 2002, the Bush Administration lied about Saddam Hussein possessing weapons of mass destruction to push for war in Iraq. Incidents like these make Americans more cautious of the government’s narrative.

Second, Bennet identifies the cause for the erosion of trust in the U.S. as our lack of “leadership.” But when it comes to Iran, the problem stems from us having too much “leadership” (read: intervention). With John Bolton, Trump’s National Security Advisor, looking for any excuse to start war with Iran, government claims about Iranian attacks are reasonably taken with a grain of salt, as it’s understood that there’s a clear conflict of interest: that same government wants to intervene in Iran.

Arguing that people should have more faith in the pro-war governmental narrative is a right-wing argument — and blaming Trump for not being a “leader” as opposed to being too hawkish is a faulty line of attack.

Sanders: Closing Statement

SANDERS: I suspect people all over the country who are watching this debate are saying these are good people, they have great ideas, but how come nothing really changes? How come for the last 45 years wages have been stagnant for the middle class? How come we have the highest rate of childhood poverty? How come 45 million people still have student debt? How come three people own more wealth than the bottom half of America? And here is the answer: nothing will change unless we have the guts to take on Wall Street, the insurance industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the military industrial complex, and the fossil fuel industry. If we don’t have the guts to take them on we will continue to have plans, we will continue to have talk, and the rich will get richer and everybody else will be struggling.

This is exactly what Bernie needs to do in order to win.

I’ve argued for months now that without populist statements like these, voters will gravitate towards candidates with an appealing character, or someone who they envision could return the U.S. to “normalcy” after the era of Trump.

Only by focusing the Democratic debate on policy substance can Sanders (and, to some extent, Warren), pierce through the “I’ll take any Democrat so long as they beat Trump” narrative and get voters to consider how the differences between moderate and progressive Democratic administrations can be just as important as the differences between a generic Democrat and Trump.

Using this populist rhetoric, Sanders captures the disdain many Americans feel towards Congress and insider politics and shows that 2020 shouldn’t just be about defeating Trump — it should be about creating a society that genuinely empowers the working and middle class.

In the end, I think Warren and Harris really excelled in the debates, while Joe Biden struggled — something that’s borne out in the post-debate polls. Sanders, Buttigieg, and Booker held their own but, in my opinion, did little to improve their standings.

Gabbard, Julian Castro, and Bill De Blasio, meanwhile, had strong performances, but it’s highly unlikely that this will transform into a nomination from the Democratic Party.

One fact remains: the race for the Democratic nomination is wide open, and many candidates — especially the “big five” of Harris, Warren, Biden, Buttigieg, and Sanders — have a legitimate shot at being selected to face off with Donald Trump.

To keep up to date with our 2020 election coverage, please click the “follow” button below to subscribe to The Outsider.