By Veronica Rocha and Fernando Alfonso III, CNN
Sen. Elizabeth Warren drew applause tonight with her answer to a question about her age and the fact that, if elected, she'd be the "oldest president ever inaugurated."
"I'd also be the youngest woman ever inaugurated," Warren said, to applause in Los Angeles.
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From CNN's Daniel Dale
Calling for an international effort to fight the climate crisis, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders criticized global spending on weapons.
“And maybe, just maybe, instead of spending $1.8 trillion a year globally on weapons of destruction, maybe an American president – i.e. Bernie Sanders — can lead the world. Instead of spending money to kill each other, maybe we pool our resources and fight our common enemy, which is climate change,” Sanders said.
Facts First: Sanders was speaking imprecisely. The $1.8 trillion figure represents all global military spending in 2018, not spending on weapons in particular.
Upon issuing the $1.8 trillion figure in April, the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, an international authority on military spending, said it “discourages the use of terms such as ‘arms spending’ when referring to military expenditure, as spending on armaments is usually only a minority of the total.”
“Military expenditure refers to all government spending on current military forces and activities, including salaries and benefits, operational expenses, arms and equipment purchases, military construction, research and development, and central administration, command and support,” the Institute said.
From CNN's David Chalian
We are nearly an hour into this debate and one thing is crystal clear thus far: The candidates are taking a pass at trying to mix it up with each other.
Perhaps it is the post-impeachment holiday season lull setting in.
Perhaps it is a strategic decision to use their time to simply try and deliver their core messages and policy prescriptions to voters 46 days before the voting begins.
It could also be that there hasn’t been a ton of proof points this cycle of candidates taking each other on directly and benefiting from it in the long term.
But with a pretty crowded field remaining in this race, the reality is that if any of these candidates are going to make a move to be #1 they need to start taking some vote share from their rivals. That is hard to do without drawing clear contrasts for the voters.
Tonight, it's clear these candidates have largely chosen to step back from driving home a choice and instead are simply presenting their pitches.
An hour in, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar leads the pack with almost nine minutes of speaking time. Mayor Pete Buttigieg follows with nearly eight.
From CNN's Eric Bradner
Republicans are already attacking former Vice President Joe Biden for saying in Thursday night’s debate that he’s willing to sacrifice jobs in the oil and gas industry to transition to a green economy.
Biden explained during his answer that the transition could bring a host of new, high-paying jobs -- and that he supports training workers for those jobs.
But he started his answer about whether he’s all right with sacrificing growth in the booming American oil and gas industries to push that transition forward.
“The answer’s yes,” he said.
That clip -- which had echoes of Hillary Clinton’s comments in 2016 about coal workers losing their jobs -- was quickly circulated by Republicans on social media.
“It’s clear: Joe Biden is a climate radical,” the Republican National Committee’s official @GOP Twitter account tweeted.
Democratic debate moderator Amna Nawaz interrupted Sen. Bernie Sanders tonight when she tried to get him to answer question about the "overwhelmingly white" presidential field.
She first asked Andrew Yang, "The Democratic party relies on black, hispanic, and Asian voters. But you are the only candidate of color on the stage tonight. And the entire field remains overwhelmingly white. What message do you think this sends to voters of color?"
After Yang wrapped up his response, she asked Sanders to respond.
Here's what happened next:
Nawaz: "Thank you, Mr. Yang. Senator Sanders, I do want to put the same question to you."
Sanders: "I'll answer that question but I wanted to get back to the issue of climate change for a moment, because I do believe this is the existential issue."
Nawaz: "Senator, with all respect, this question is about race. Can you answer the question as it was asked?"
Sanders: "Because people of color in fact are going to be the people suffering most if we do not deal with climate change. And by the way, we have an obligation up here, if there are not any of our African-American brothers and sisters up here, to speak about an economy in which African-Americans are exploited, where black women die three times at higher rates than white women, where we have a criminal justice system which is racist and broken, disproportionately made up of African-Americans and Latinos and Native Americans who are in jail. We need an economy that focuses on the needs of oppressed, exploited people, and that is the African-American community. "
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Andrew Yang said Thursday that is was "both an honor and disappointment” to be the only candidate of color on the debate stage, something that happened after New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro failed to qualify for the debate and California Sen. Kamala Harris dropped out of the race.
“It’s both an honor and disappointment to be the lone candidate of color on the stage tonight,” said Yang, who is Asian.
“I miss Kamala, I miss Cory,” Yang said, before adding with a smile, “although I think Cory will be back.”
The line drew big applause and highlighted Yang’s long-standing friendship with Booker. Yang went on to detail how he had racial epithets used against him as a child, but added, “but black and Latinos have something much more powerful working against them than words.”
Yang used the answer to pivot to his Freedom Dividend, the universal basic income proposal that is central to his campaign.
“The question is why am I the lone candidate of color on this stage? Fewer than 5% of Americans donate to political campaigns. You know what you need to donate to political campaigns? Disposable income,” Yang said. “I guarantee if we had a freedom dividend of $1,000 a month, I would not be the only candidate of color on this stage tonight.”
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Former Vice President Joe Biden said that returning to “normal is not enough” when pressed Thursday night on his claims that if President Donald Trump loses in 2020, Republicans will have an “epiphany” and bipartisan cooperation will become more possible.
“With Trump out of the way, it’s not going to change things in a fundamental way,” Biden said.
Still, he said, Republicans would no longer be intimidated by the threat of primaries from pro-Trump challengers.
“I refuse to accept the notion, as some on this stage do, that we can never, never get to a place where we have cooperation again. If that’s the case, then we are dead as a country,” he said.
Biden said he has “no love” for GOP lawmakers who have attacked him and his family.
“We have to be able to get things done, and when we can’t convince them, we go out and beat them like we did in the 2018 elections in red states and in purple states,” he said.
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From CNN's Dan Merica
South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg subtly hit Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren in response to a question about her ambitious and costly plans, suggesting that Warren is offering the country a “false choice” by arguing candidates who don’t agree with her vision are not willing to take on the nation’s biggest fights.
“Right now, I think we’re being offered a false choice. You either have to go all the way to the extreme or it’s business as usual,” Buttigieg said. “Yes, we must deliver big ideas and yes, taxes on wealthy individuals and on corporations are going to have to go up. We can also be smart about the promises we’re making, make sure they’re promises that we can keep without the kind of taxation that economists tell us could hurt the economy.”
Buttigieg added, “Whether it’s infrastructure, childcare, housing, health, on issue after issue, we’ve got to break out of the Washington mindset that measures the bigness of an idea by the trillions of dollars it adds to the budget or the boldness of an idea by how many Americans it can antagonize.”
Buttigieg’s argument against Warren heading into the debate is that she has unrealistic proposals that don’t add up and is more interested in fighting than accomplishing the possible.
