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Best Tweets Of The First Democratic Primary Debate

By: Kyle Sammin
12 min read

Conventional wisdom was that this group was the de facto undercard, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren joining a bunch of Lilliputians.

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Round one, part one, of the Democratic debate season kicked off last night in Miami. Despite the Democratic National Committee’s great show of even-handedness (in contrast to 2016), the task of dividing the 20 eligible candidates into two equal squads worked out a little lopsidedly.

Conventional wisdom was that this group was the de facto undercard, with Sen. Elizabeth Warren joining a bunch of Lilliputians. Did you watch it? If not, who could blame you? Don’t worry, though, we’ve collected the best wit and wisdom of Twitter to get you all caught up.

Part One: ¡Nosotros Hablamos Español!

Did the performances match those predictions? At first, the only thing we could tell was that there sure were a lot of people on that stage.


Introductions out of the way, the moderators tossed the first question to the belle of the ball, Warren. It was doom and gloom from the start.


The same question to Sen. Amy Klobuchar produced the same answer, sprinkled with some non sequiturs.


Robert Francis O’Rourke, a.k.a. Beto, a.k.a. El Gran Irlandés, took it to another answer, choosing to answer a question on tax rates in Spanish, for some reason.


https://twitter.com/beyondreasdoubt/status/1144049509586128897


It kind of set the tone for the evening.


The equality-themed questions rolled through the rest of the field.


The answers were all basically the same.


Some turned it back to their talking points better than others, though


And a few of the guys you’ve never heard of got to jump in at last.


Part Two: Down With Obamacare

Fresh from vastly expanding the government’s control of health care in 2010, the candidates were asked: you wanna go double or nothing?

The biggest difference between them would be whether they would force insurance companies out of business, or just regulate them to death. Klobuchar led the fight for moderation.


John Delaney followed suit, calling for making things work rather than proposing grandiose plans that inevitably fail. That got nowhere with this crowd, but a few folks watching at home may take notice.


Bill de Blasio followed Warren right off the deep end, calling for all health insurance to be nationalized.


O’Rourke tried to steer the debate back to safety…


…and was viciously attacked from the Sandinista wing.


Part Three: First Blood

All the talk of health care naturally led the Democrats to consider killing the unborn.


Julian Castro of Texas proposed taxpayer-funded abortions for transgender men. Is that even possible?


Part Four: Mas Español

After the commercial break, we discovered why Cory Booker was so mad at El Beto for speaking Spanish: he was planning to do the same shtick!


After that, the multilingual floodgates opened, and the whole scene became even less intelligible to the average American.



The debate, or at least the part still in English, turned to a mano a mano between O’Rourke and Castro in a fairly technical discussion of the immigration laws. The off-brand Kennedy came off the worse for wear.


Part Five: Technical Difficulties

After swapping out moderators, the MSNBC team suffered various technical malfunctions and gave us all a chance to refill our whiskey glasses.


Once that was resolved, they moved on to the asking how many guns the Democrats wanted to confiscate. The answers ranged from most to all. Warren’s answer was confusing.


Booker talked about how his neighbors are criminals


Klobuchar and O’Rourke tried to thread the needle.


Ninety minutes in, even the candidates were getting tired of it, and a lot of yelling broke out. DiBlasio won the prize for biggest loudmouth, shouting everybody down in the melee.


Part Six: Potpourri

At last, from Jay Inslee’s point of view, the talk turned to global warming.


Tulsi Gabbard at last got a question: why does she hate gay people? She said she’s changed, but the Twitteratti weren’t buying it.


Klobuchar got a question about how she’d help minority voters and answered with the part of her stump speech about retirement savings and daycare.


Then Gabbard and Tim Ryan had, for those who were still awake, the most interesting exchange of the night, on whether we should still be fighting in Afghanistan.


It was getting late.


And it was time to wrap things up. There were a few unanswered questions


And a few shocking revalations


But in the end, all the viewers were asking the same thing:

Kyle Sammin is a senior contributor to The Federalist and the co-host of the Conservative Minds podcast podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @KyleSammin.

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