LAS VEGAS — Wednesday's Democratic presidential debate offered little substance on younger voters' most important issues, with candidates instead dedicating much of their time on stage to throwing verbal punches at each other.
While issues like the environment, debt and social issues consistently rank high in polls of younger voters, the debate was mostly a series of attempted take-downs. Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg had barely settled at the podium for his first presidential debate when he found himself under fire.
Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren got gasps from the audience after saying, "I’d like to talk about who we are running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians — and no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg."
"Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist policies like red lining and stop-and-frisk," she continued.
Former Vice President Joe Biden hit Bloomberg on his work as mayor of New York City. "He has not managed his city very well when he was there. He didn't get a whole lot done. He had stop-and-frisk throwing close to five million young black men up against a wall."
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders also attacked Bloomberg's previous job performance: "Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop-and-frisk, which went after African-American and Latino people in an outrageous way."
Bloomberg defended himself by claiming he was the one who could defeat President Trump. "I think we have two questions to face tonight: one is, who can beat Donald Trump, and number two, who can do the job if they get to the White House? And I would argue that I am the candidate that can do exactly both of those things. I'm a New Yorker. I know how to take on an arrogant con man like Donald Trump."
But Bloomberg's defense did nothing to stop the attacks.
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked both Bloomberg and Sanders, saying voters would not be inspired "if they got to choose between a socialist who thinks capitalism is the root of all evil and a billionaire who thinks money ought to be the root of all power."
He continued, "We shouldn't have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down and another candidate who wants to buy this party out."
After more than 20 minutes had passed, and having barely gotten a word in, Bloomberg raised his hands and asked the room, "What am I, chicken liver?"
The attacks and counter attacks left little time for the candidates to discuss their plans for the country if they were to become the next president.
Student debt was only mentioned briefly and the national debt — which is a record $22 trillion and is expected to grow to 98 percent of GDP by 2030 — got zero mention.
Millennials and Gen Z-ers will be one third of the eligible voting population in 2020, but it was more than an hour into the debate before an issue important to young people, climate change, came up.
Every candidate on stage except Bloomberg has voiced support for the Green New Deal, a proposed package of United States legislation that aims to address climate change and economic inequality. Polls show that as many as 75 percent of millennials somewhat support the proposal.
Bloomberg began by saying he would rejoin the Paris Accord, an international effort to combat climate change, on the first day of his presidency. Warren said the answer will come from investing in science, telling the audience, "I believe in science and I believe that the way we are going to deal with the problem is by increasing ten fold our investment in science."
"Much that is what is needed has not been invented," she added.
But it didn't take long for the candidates to go right back to arguing.
After watching the back and forth, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar remarked, "I was thinking there should be a boxing rematch on Saturday in Vegas and those guys should go down there."
Young voters historically got little attention from presidential candidates because they tended to have low turnout rates in elections. But that changed with the 2018 midterm election, when 3.3 million millennials voted early. A Pew Research report on 2018 voter turnout analyzed Census data and determined that millennial turnout surged to 42 percent, a full 20 percentage points higher than in 2014.
