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With voting set to begin in less than three months, moderate Democrats have struck back. Suddenly, they are asserting their influence in a presidential primary long dominated by liberal ideas and candidates one-upping each other with ever more sweeping proposals to enact fundamental changes and dramatically expand government services.
The debate here Wednesday night served as the clearest indication yet of this shift, which reflects rising concerns among party leaders and voters that Democrats risk losing to President Donald Trump in 2020 if they embrace polarizing ideas. It also underlines former vice president Joe Biden's inability thus far to cement his standing as the moderate standard-bearer in the race, prompting nervous Democrats to give other centrists a closer look.
"The narrative was, 'Look, the Democrats have been taken over by the liberals and it's the party of AOC,' " said former Democratic senator Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, referring to liberal Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y. "I think there's been a reaction to that, which is, 'That's not the Democratic Party I signed up for.' "
The presidential campaign's ideological battle is far from settled, however, with staunchly liberal Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., showing a resurgence since his Oct. 1 heart attack. His improvement has put pressure on the other leader on the left, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to stand firmly behind liberal priorities as she seeks at the same time to broaden her appeal to more traditional Democrats.
But efforts by prominent Democrats to nudge the candidates toward the middle have been mounting. Recent electoral victories by centrists in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia - which built on themes that helped Democrats prevail in last year's midterm contests - have prompted calls in the party to apply their winning formulas to the 2020 landscape.
Former president Barack Obama recently broke from his practice of saying little about the race in public when he issued blunt warnings to the candidates about the dangers of veering too far left. He is expected to reprise that theme at a party fundraiser Thursday in Silicon Valley, according to an aide.
Some moderate Democrats who initially declined to enter the race have had a change of heart. Former Massachusetts governor Deval Patrick jumped in last week. Bloomberg, a former New York mayor and one of world's wealthiest people, filed federal papers Thursday declaring himself a candidate. His presence has prompted outrage from Sanders and many of his supporters.
The tone of Wednesday's debate stood in contrast to earlier showdowns that had more anti-establishment, leftward bents. Where there was once criticism from Obama's left about the former president, Wednesday brought nothing but praise for him, including California Sen. Kamala Harris' calls to "rebuild the Obama coalition." The name of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., who routinely has counseled a middle course, was invoked positively. The heated exchanges over highly charged issues such as gun buybacks and decriminalizing unauthorized border crossings that headlined earlier debates were nowhere to be found.
Pete Buttigieg, the 37-year-old South Bend, Indiana, mayor, has risen to the top of some recent polls in all-important Iowa as he has repositioned more in the moderate lane and as an alternative to Biden. He has paired his pitch for generational change with calls for bipartisan healing in the post-Trump era.
"I'm running to be the president for that day the sun comes up and the Trump presidency is behind us, which will be a tender moment in the life of this country," he said Wednesday. "And we are going to have to unify a nation that will be as divided as ever."
It was clear that several of Buttigieg's rivals came prepared to elbow into the space he has crafted of late. Booker, D-N.J., who is running on a similar platform, referred to himself as the "other Rhodes Scholar mayor on this stage." (Booker also sought to present himself as a strong contrast to Warren when he critiqued her proposed wealth tax.) Klobuchar, a fellow moderate, said that while Buttigieg often says "the right words," she has the right experience.
Klobuchar also challenged some of the ideas Warren and Sanders are promoting, most notably free tuition at public colleges and universities and a Medicare-for-all system in which the government is the sole insurer. "I am not going to go for things just because they sound good on a bumper sticker and then throw in a free car," she said.
Warren's maneuverings on Medicare-for-all have provided one of the clearest glimpses of the field's broader shift toward a more moderate posture. After declaring "I'm with Bernie" in a June debate, Warren faced questions and criticisms about whether she would finance the plan on the backs of middle-class taxpayers and what it would mean for the future of private insurance.
Earlier this month, she broke from Sanders, releasing a financing plan that she said would not require a middle-class tax hike. She also added an intermediate step that would allow Americans to choose to stick with their private insurance for the first three years of her administration.
On Wednesday, she said her most immediate priority would be bringing down the cost of prescription drugs and protecting the Affordable Care Act that Obama passed in 2010 - decidedly moderate positions.
Advocates of expanding Obamacare instead of scrapping it in favor of Medicare-for-all, including Biden, Klobuchar and Buttigieg, have become more aggressive in defense of their plans. They have argued for them on policy and political grounds.
"I don't think we should be trashing Obamacare," Klobuchar said early Thursday morning. "That's not what the people in Kentucky just said or the people in Virginia. They want to build on it."
She added: "The American people are watching us right now. And this debate, if we just focus on Medicare-for-all, day after day after day, it's not real."
On the opposite end of the spectrum is Sanders, who has vowed to introduce a Medicare-for-all bill in his first week as president. The current system is "not only cruel, it is dysfunctional," Sanders said Wednesday.
Although Obama has not stated a preference in the insurance debate, he has mentioned health care, along with border security and immigration, as areas where far-reaching changes have proven to be tough sells for many Americans and which, if not handled properly, could complicate the party's path to victory.
His views are both consistent with his presidency and reflective of broader Democratic fears about the danger of the party's nominee being cast in the general election as far more liberal than the nation overall.
"I don't think we should be deluded into thinking that the resistance to certain approaches to things is simply because voters haven't heard a bold enough proposal," Obama said at a Democracy Alliance summit last week. "People rightly are cautious because they don't have a lot of margin for error."
Some Democrats rejected the notion that the center of gravity in the primary is shifting toward the middle. "I think what the race is doing is deepening," Stacey Abrams, the 2018 Democratic nominee for governor of Georgia and a potential vice presidential pick, told reporters in Atlanta hours before Wednesday's debate. "We are getting more thoughtful information."
A rise in centrist energy could have an unintended effect, some Democrats said, by crowding the lane Biden, Buttigieg and others are competing in and splitting up that vote. Such a scenario could clear a path for Sanders or Warren to consolidate support on the left and give them more establishment foes to rail against, those Democrats said.
"Bloomberg is a really effective foil for Bernie and what Bernie's stood for for years and years," said Sanders's pollster Ben Tulchin.
For Biden, the challenge is preventing his vote from splintering off to other candidates running on similar platforms. One major advantage he possesses is his ability to appeal to African-American voters, which others, particularly Buttigieg, have struggled mightily to do so far. Several of the candidates made pitches before black voters in Atlanta on Thursday as they sought to shore up their support, a prerequisite to launching a full assault on Biden.
While Biden's partisans denied he would cede any moderate turf, others suggested there were nonetheless upsides to the conversations dominating now.
"I like hearing a practical message because as a local elected official, as a mayor, we have to be pragmatists," said Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney, who met with Biden on Thursday but who is neutral in the race.
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