“While Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren all had good moments, this debate belonged to Klobuchar. For once, she hit all her marks, whether attacking one of the others, joking with Bernie Sanders about a bill they had co-sponsored, or — again and again — turning each answer into an attack on Trump… Will it matter? Unlikely.”
Jonathan Bernstein, Bloomberg

“Despite questions about socialism and the viability of Medicare for All, Sanders was steady and commanding. While candidates talked about uniting the party, no other frontrunner can claim to have the economic, ethnic and ideological diversity [of] Sanders, who has the most people of color and lowest [median neighborhood income] in his donor base and success attracting independents…

“Contrasting Buttigieg, who seems to believe billionaires are mere constituents and not a part of a power structure that siphons wealth from everyday Americans, Sanders staked his allegiance assertively with the working class. He warned that none of the progressive policies being promoted can pass if corporate and billionaire donors have undue influence on candidates, and he is the only candidate who doesn’t have billionaire financing in his campaign coffers. Talk is cheap, and few but Sanders seem like they will prioritize people over billionaire patrons when it’s time to deliver.”
Malaika Jabali, The Guardian

“Buttigieg dodged questions on his healthcare plan and he dodged a question on a troubling history of police racism during his tenure as the Mayor of South Bend. He was heavy on niceties, light on specifics. He made lots of calls for unity, specifically in his attacks on the Senators to his left, but he did not have much to say about what Americans should unify around, or how to persuade them [to] do so. His answers sounded more like marketing copy for a nefarious tech start up than like statements of political principle. He looked, more than anything, like a man who has not relaxed since he was a child.”
Moira Donegan, The Guardian

Regarding the healthcare debate, “It’s not just that the Canadian and British governments finance health care that’s free at point of service for all citizens, they do it while spending less than our government does even if you completely ignore America’s enormous private sector health spending…

“Warren, who had a brand as the woman with a thousand plans, was expected to draw up a specific plan to make her health care vision work… Sanders is free of a wonk reputation or a need to worry about his left flank, so he doesn’t try to offer a specific health care financing vision — which, if he did it, would inevitably end up featuring some unpleasant tradeoffs. Instead, he just makes the basic compelling point… [that] America’s health care system is bizarrely terrible, providing less coverage at greater cost than what we see in comparable countries. This is not an adequate basis for actually enacting Medicare-for-all, but it’s a good political answer that explains his big picture view of health care without falling into nasty political traps.”
Matthew Yglesias, Vox