WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 21st November, 2019) Ten candidates for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination next year sparred in a nearly two and half hour nationally televised debate in which front-runners former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders were never seriously attacked or embarrassed.
In contrast to the four previous debates in the series, the 10 candidates in Atlanta, Georgia on Wednesday night largely focused on the positive aspects of their agenda and reserved their rhetorical hostility for President Donald Trump and his Republican administration rather than attacking each other.
The debate was organized by MSNBC television network and The Washington Post newspaper.
However, Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard drew personal attacks from Sen. Kamala Harris of California and Indiana South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg who criticized her for meeting with Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Gabbard replied by citing the examples of now revered US presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy who met with Soviet leaders Josef Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev during their times in office.
Gabbard was the most outspoken candidate on the need to end the long US cycle of seeking regime change and getting involved in foreign wars around the world.
She identified the Democratic administration of President Bill Clinton along with the Republican ones of George W. Bush and Trump as pushing those policies.
All the candidates appeared united on the need to dramatically expand and universalize health care.
There was no dissent at all on the need to defend abortion rights from conservative Christians and Republicans and to crack down on white supremacists.
None of the 10 candidates offered a word of support for re-elected Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat who has signed into law a controversial bill that rolls back rights to abortion.
Sen. Warren said she believed a woman's right to abortion was a human right and should not be compromised. But she stopped short of saying whether Governor Edwards or anyone else opposed to abortion should be expelled from the Democratic Party.
"I'm not here to try to drive anyone out of the party," Warren said.
Former Vice President Biden remained cool, confident and dignified with a more restrained delivery than almost all the other candidates.
Biden said that if elected, he would not personally order any prosecution of current President Trump for any alleged crimes committed while he was in the White House.
Biden said that as president, he would leave such decisions to be made independently by the Attorney General he appointed.
"I would not direct the Justice Department as this president does... [I would] let them make an independent judgment," he said.
Several of the candidates including Buttigieg and Sens. Amy Klobuchar and Cory Booker appealed for more support, especially financial for their campaigns, reflecting their weakened state in opinion polls.
Before the debate, only Biden, Sanders and Warren remained strong in their polling numbers with Buttigieg still very low but showing local strength in the state of Iowa whose caucuses provide the first small test of Democratic Party grassroots opinion early next year.
