DETROIT (CN) – Ten Democratic presidential candidates faced off in a frenetic debate in Detroit Tuesday night that pitted progressives against moderates in a battle over the ideals that will shape the future of the party, and, perhaps, the country.
In a lightning-round type format, the candidates addressed health care, climate change, foreign policy, guns, race, and the economy, among other issues, at the first of two debates at the historic Fox Theatre. Ten other Democratic candidates will debate there Wednesday night.
At the theater in a gentrified part of the city, where several years of concentrated private investment have paid off handsomely, former Maryland Congressman John Delaney pointed to the story of Detroit as an example of what Democrats can do when they run on “real solutions” instead of what he called “fairy tale economics.”
“This city is turning around because the government and the private sector are working well together,” Delaney said. “That has to be our model going forward.”
Senator Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass, pushed back on the “fairy tale” and “wish list economics” remarks of her centrist opponents.
“You know, I don't understand why anybody goes to all the trouble of running for president of the United States just to talk about what we really can't do and shouldn't fight for.”
Earlier in the debate, Delaney and Warren butted heads on the issue of health care, after the former congressman said Sanders’ Medicare for All plan was “bad policy.”
“You’re wrong,” Sanders replied to applause.
He said there are 87 million uninsured people in the U.S. and the country should come together to help those who are living without access to affordable health care.
“Five minutes away from here is Canada … they spend half of what we spend,” Sanders said.
Delaney responded that the Democratic party did not have to “be the party of subtraction with elimination of private insurance companies,” which riled Warren.
“We are not about taking health care away from anyone,” Warren said. “We are Democrats.”
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg, who supports Medicare for All, said he believes Americans will “walk away from private plans,” but Marianne Williamson, D-Texas, said she was not sure such a plan could pass in Congress.
“Republicans will shut us down on health care,” she said.
Buttigieg said it doesn’t matter what the Republicans think because they will hate it no matter what.
“If we embrace a far left agenda, Republicans will call us socialist. If we embrace a conservative agenda, Republicans will call us socialist,” he said.
While the revitalized downtown area of Detroit where the debate was held spans about seven square miles, the surrounding parts of the city have struggling neighborhoods, where crime and gun violence is still common.
The issue of gun control was one that united the candidates.
Buttigieg lamented that there are now two generations of Americans for whom school shootings are normalized.
“High school is hard enough without worrying that you are going to be shot,” he said. “We know what to do and it hasn’t happened.”
