The recent debates have broken the Democratic presidential primary “wide open” after a poor showing from former Vice President Joe Biden and a strong performance by lesser-known candidates, Politico reports.
An unnamed adviser to a “mid-tier candidate” told Politico, “I just feel like the inevitability of Joe Biden is over.”
Biden, who went into the debates leading in most polls, and Vermont independent Sen. Bernie Sanders, who had been near the top of most polls, “were largely living off of inertia,” according to longtime Democratic strategist Colin Strother, who added that the other candidates showed that “they have a lot of other things to offer.”
Although Sanders wasn’t challenged on his record like Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., challenged Biden on his record on busing, his performance in the debate left many voters with something to be desired, and was overshadowed by his fellow progressive, Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren, who has steadily risen in prominence over the last few weeks.
Politico notes that by the weekend after the debate, Harris had raised record amounts of money for her campaign, and Warren was hosting thousands of supporters at a rally in Chicago.
“There’d been this whole not-so-subtle electability argument,” said progressive consultant Rebecca Katz, who worked on Cynthia Nixon’s unsuccessful primary campaign against New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo. “That one-two punch [from Harris and Warren] showed not only that women can hold their own, but they can smoke ‘em.”