“One of the problems the moderates have driving home their message, aside from their own lack of fame and standing, is that it’s not very inspiring to make arguments about what isn’t possible… Of course, the moderates do have plans of their own — plans that, in most cases, are probably more ambitious than even a Democratic Senate would pass into law. And Democratic voters, unlike progressive intellectuals, are in an intensely pragmatic mood and leery of taking risks when they see defeating Trump as essential. The centrists were given ample opportunity to make the case against the party’s race to the left. But the mere fact that so many of them made it gave none of them an especially sharp profile in the role they all crave: the center-left alternative to Joe Biden.”
Jonathan Chait, New York Magazine

“Health care spending makes up somewhere around a fifth of the U.S. economy. It affects every American, and is a life-or-death issue for millions of them every year. And here in the United States, where we spend more on care but die younger than in comparable countries, it’s a mess. So let us know how you’d fix it in 15 seconds…

“Tapper attempted to corner Warren and Sanders into a yes/no answer on whether they’d raise middle-class taxes to fund their ‘Medicare for All’ plans. Tax increases, as an exasperated Sanders noted, are a GOP talking point, but they’re also only part of the equation of the personal finances of health care. Because if, as Sanders and Warren promise, your taxes go up some but your out-of-pocket costs go down by more, you’re better off. That’s an argument worth discussing, but it’s a discussion that one can’t have a quarter of one minute at a time.”
Ryan Bort, Rolling Stone

“The monomaniacal focus on health care left little time for something crucial: the rest of the world. Foreign policy is, arguably, the single most important issue voters should care about in comparing these candidates. It’s one of the few domains of policy where Congress has very little role and the presidency has nearly untrammeled authority. The president can use military force without Congress; she can damage or reconfigure alliances without Congress; she can condemn or sanction adversaries without Congress. All that is a far, far cry from presidential authority on, say, health care, where the president can do almost nothing to make Medicare for All a reality without Congress… No time was spent on Saudi Arabia, none on China’s rising military influence, and almost none on Iran. North Korea got a minute at most… It was a huge wasted opportunity.”
Dylan Matthews, Vox

Finally, some argue that “so far, I’ve found Buttigieg’s campaign underwhelming on policy. But where he’s clearly leading the field is his emphasis on structural reform. Buttigieg isn’t the only candidate with good ideas on this score — Elizabeth Warren and Jay Inslee have been strong on this too — but he’s the only candidate who consistently prioritizes the issue…

“The reality is Democrats are debating ever more ambitious policy in a political system ever less capable of passing ambitious policy — and ever more stacked against their policies, in particular. Their geographic disadvantage in Congress is only getting worse, Republicans control the White House and the Senate despite receiving fewer votes for either, and an activist conservative Supreme Court just gutted public sector unions and greenlit partisan gerrymandering. Policy isn’t Democrats’ problem. They’ve got plenty of plans. Some of them are even popular. What they don’t have is a political system in which they can pass and implement those plans.”
Ezra Klein, Vox