Winners and losers from the December Democratic debate [View all]

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Winners

Joe Biden: I’ve had him as a loser in just about every debate thus far. He’s been halting, often confused and hasn’t shown himself to be the kind of debater Democrats will want going toe-to-toe with President Trump. Thursday night was better. It wasn’t flawless, but he kept things on the rails, had flashes of good humor, and was deft with tough moments he could see approaching, including about his age.

He dealt particularly well with the toughest question he got, which was about a recent Washington Post report on how leaders, including those in the Obama administration, misled the country about the status of the war in Afghanistan. He said he argued against nation-building there and emphasized disagreements with the Pentagon about things like the troops surge. And he’s got documents to back that up. He had previously struggled when asked to own particular elements of the Obama legacy, but not Thursday.

Biden also described how he connects with voters, including by talking like a child who stutters — something he struggled with when he was younger. President Trump’s former press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, appeared to not pick up on what Biden was actually doing and ridiculed him on Twitter, which could be a lasting moment from this debate. Sanders later apologized and deleted that tweet.

Perhaps most importantly for him, as the candidate who leads almost all of the national polls — and has in recent weeks reasserted that lead — the other candidates mostly gave him a pass. Even when the topic was conducting high-dollar fundraisers, most of the heat was trained on South Bend, Ind. Mayor Pete Buttigieg, and when Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.) seemed to want to press the issue on Biden, he was bypassed. Suddenly, we saw the Joe Biden who dealt with Paul D. Ryan in the 2012 vice presidential debate. Will he stick around, though?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/12/19/winners-losers-december-democratic-debate/