2020 Vision: Kamala Harris takes a victory lap
Welcome to 2020 Vision, the Yahoo News column covering the presidential race. Reminder: There are 220 days until the Iowa caucuses and 493 days until the 2020 presidential election.
Just in: The ratings for Thursday night's debate New York were the highest for any Democratic debate in Nielsen ratings history, NBC said Friday. The event, which was broadcast on NBC, MSNBC and Telemundo, averaged 18.1 million television viewers, eclipsing the record 15.5 million viewers who watched the first Democratic primary debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders in 2015. Wednesday night's debate drew 15.3 million viewers.
Both nights still paled in comparison to the first Republican primary debate of the 2016 presidential cycle. That event, hosted by Fox News in August 2015, averaged 24 million viewers, making it the highest-rated primary debate in history.
Kamala's victory lap
Fresh off her strong performance at Thursday night's debate, Sen. Kamala Harris appeared on “CBS This Morning” and MSNBC's "Morning Joe" on Friday. On CBS, Harris responded to criticism from Joe Biden's campaign that her pointed attack on his record on race was a “low blow.”
“It was about just speaking truth and as I’ve said many times, I have a great deal of respect for Joe Biden,” she said. “But he and I disagree on that.”
During the debate, Harris confronted Biden over his nostalgic remarks about working with segregationist colleagues when he was a young senator in the 1970s. Harris, who is black, recalled being bused to school as a child in Berkeley, Calif., and charged Biden with opposing busing for integration.
"My purpose was to really just make sure that in this conversation we are appreciating the impact on real people of policies that have been pushed in the history of our country," Harris explained, adding: "If segregationists had their way, I would not be a member of the United States Senate today. I would not be a top contender to be president of the United States."
Harris then joined other candidates, including South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro, at the Homestead migrant child detention facility, which has become a flashpoint in raising awareness of family separations under President Trump's immigration policy.
They weren’t allowed inside.
Harris said the visit made her think of her daughters.
“None of us would want this for our children,” she said. "This is a human rights abuse being committed by the United States government."
[5 takeaways from Thursday night’s Democratic debate]
Candidates claim fundraising spikes
Yahoo News’ Andrew Romano assesses the post-debate money bump:
Call them the Three M’s. When gauging the impact of a particular presidential debate, you have to ask 1) Who had a Moment? 2 What kind of Momentum did it get them? and 3) Where’s the Money?
The third metric is especially important this year. Starting in September, the only Democrats who will be invited to appear on the debate stage will be those who have cracked 2 percent in four national polls taken between June 28 and Aug. 28 and racked up 130,000 individual donors, including a minimum of 400 each in 20 states — a threshold roughly twice as high as the one for the summer debates. Which means the lower-tier candidates need to step up their fundraising game if they want to survive, and the upper-tier candidates need to step on the gas if they want to show strength (especially because the deadline for second-quarter fundraising is Sunday).
There was a little girl in California who was bussed to school. That little girl was me. #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/XKm2xP1MDH
— Kamala Harris (@KamalaHarris) June 28, 2019
The debates themselves provide the biggest platform for doing just that. That's why pretty much every candidate is now mining his or her performance for material — and using that material to ask for money. Cory Booker gave Beto O'Rourke side-eye for showing off his Spanish skills? Now Booker is fundraising off that viral image. Kamala Harris ripped into Joe Biden's complicated history on the issue of busing, saying “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day — that little girl was me”? Now Harris is selling “That Little Girl Was Me” T-shirts. Meanwhile, most of their rivals went with more generic pitches, cutting together an inspirational clip scored to soaring instrumental music (Beto O'Rourke) or posting a less formal iPhone ask immediately after stepping off the stage (Pete Buttigieg).
The question now is how much cash these efforts raise. So far, only Julián Castro, Wednesday night's breakout star, has released any stats. According to the Castro campaign, the former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary saw donations skyrocket 3,266 percent Wednesday and Thursday, as compared to the previous two days. All in all, Castro tripled his best previous fundraising day, both in terms of dollars raised and number of donations. That should go a long way toward helping him qualify for the second round of debates this fall.
Scenes from the spin room
Yahoo News’ Brittany Shepherd describes the post-debate scrum in Miami:
The floor of a small theater of Adrienne Arsht Center in Miami — full of cramped camera set-ups, live shot locations, something called the “Comcast Business Lounge,” as well as a center for the press to file their stories — felt, at times, more like a live taping of MSNBC than a scene of campaign narrative control. And night one of the debates saw the bulk of the spin-room action.
After a night of sparring between Beto O’Rourke and Julián Castro, every candidate and their respective teams made time to speak to the press — in between their cable hits, of course. Swarms of reporters, many with tall boom sticks in hand, crowded Castro and Booker, holding their iPhones aloft in hopes of getting a good quote about their meme-able moments. Nearby, campaigns bobbed their lollipop signs and offered their take on things, too.
Night two was far less exciting. Though sparks flew on the debate stage, far fewer candidates made their way over to the press room. Harris made a few stops, tieless Andrew Yang made his rounds, Marianne Williamson continued make her spiritually charged pitch and John Delaney was spotted wandering around pre-debate. Noticeably absent were Pete Buttigieg and Joe Biden. By the time reporters ventured outside after midnight to head back to their hotels, there was at least one consolation: The Miami night had turned less humid.
Trump meets with Putin, mocks ‘meddling’
While political pundits were assessing the Democratic debate performances in Miami, President Trump was meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Osaka, Japan. When asked by a reporter if he planned to tell Russia not to meddle in the U.S. election, Trump answered with a smirk.
“Yes of course I will,” Trump said, turning to Putin. “Don’t meddle in the election. Don’t meddle in the election.”
Around the same time back in the United States, former President Jimmy Carter declared Trump to be an illegitimate president due to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
Speaking at a Carter Center event on human rights in Leesburg, Va., Carter was asked how he would deal with Russian meddling in the last presidential election.
“The president himself should condemn it, admit that it happened, which I think 16 intelligence agencies have already agreed to say,” Carter said. “And there’s no doubt that the Russians did interfere in the election, and I think the interference, although not yet quantified, if fully investigated would show that Trump didn’t actually win the election in 2016. He lost the election, and he was put into office because the Russians interfered on his behalf.”
Trump's trolling poll
Earlier this week, the Trump campaign posted on its website a 10-question poll. And let’s just say it’s not exactly unbiased:
Looking ahead to the next debate
Yahoo News’ Christopher Wilson previews what’s next:
With the first set of Democratic debates behind them, candidates have just over a month to get ready for the next gathering, to be held July 30 and 31 in Detroit. It will have the same format, with 20 candidates divided between two nights. (We hope the distribution will be more even than this week, when only one of the five frontrunners, Elizabeth Warren, was on the stage Wednesday.)
The qualifications to get on the card in Michigan — and on CNN, which will be broadcasting the debate — are the same: 65,000 donors or 1 percent in three polls approved by the DNC, with candidates who achieve both locking in a spot and polling average serving as the tie breaker if the field needs further winnowing. The campaign of Montana Gov. Steve Bullock, who failed to qualify for the first debate, has said he’s hit the polling mark and will be eligible for Detroit, which could displace one of the candidates you saw near the edge of the stage Wednesday and Thursday. Rep. Seth Moulton of Massachusetts, former Rep. Joe Sestak of Pennsylvania, former Alaska Sen. Mike Gravel and Miramar, Fla., Mayor Wayne Messam are among other candidates hoping to earn their way onto the stage.
After July’s gathering, the DNC qualifications get much tougher, as outlined above. Politico reports that five candidates have already hit the 130,000-donor mark (Biden, Buttigieg, Harris, Sanders, Warren) and that Yang and O’Rourke are likely close. So while candidates hit the trail and prepare for round two at the end of July, their campaigns’ digital operations will be striving to hit the donor mark (a threshold that has frustrated staffers) by 11:59 p.m. on Aug. 28.
Read more original 2020 coverage from Yahoo News:
Harris’s confrontation with Biden a defining moment for first debates
Biden responds to attack on his age: ‘I’m still holding on to that torch’
Candidates pledge to provide health care to undocumented immigrants
Beto breaks into Spanish in first answer at Democratic debate
For some Democratic underdogs, first debate gave a much-needed boost
Marianne Williamson gets her Twitter moment by standing up for love
