Everything the Candidates Discussed at the Atlanta Debate

By Allison McCartney, Jackie Gu, Chloe Whiteaker and Mira Rojanasakul

November 21, 2019, 5:00 AM EST

With impeachment proceedings lighting up Capitol Hill this week, President Donald Trump continued to cast a long shadow over the Democratic debate stage Wednesday night, where issues of foreign policy and democracy took center stage. In a generally civil debate, candidates seemed eager to discuss how to beat Trump rather than attack one another, repeatedly calling for unity to heal the country’s divisions.

Certain social issues that hadn’t been discussed much in previous debates were highlighted this time, including paid family leave, voter suppression and abortion rights. Climate change, too, finally got a boost in coverage after several debates in which it received little attention—despite polls showing it to be one of the most important issues for many Democratic voters.

Gun control was discussed at length in the two previous debates after several high-profile shootings in Dayton, Ohio and El Paso, Texas, but tonight it was ignored—despite more mass shootings in Fresno, California and Santa Clarita, California that made headlines last week.

The issues that dominated each debate

Share of words spoken during the debate

Read the full transcript, tagged by issue

South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg faced criticism from Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard and California Senator Kamala Harris, who slammed his lack of experience and struggles connecting with black voters. The attacks, however, elevated his visibility on stage, giving him more speaking time to defend himself. He was third in number of words spoken behind former Vice President Joe Biden and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.

Harris also accused Gabbard, who has a notably male-dominated and Republican fanbase, of “[buddying] up to Steve Bannon,” criticizing Democrats on Fox News and “[failing] to call a war criminal by what he is.” In response to Gabbard’s comments on his lack of experience in foreign policy, Buttigieg brought up her meeting with the Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad, a “murderous dictator.”

Sanders, despite continuing to poll in third place behind Biden and Warren, fell near the bottom of the pack in number of words spoken. Early in the debate, after Warren was asked about Medicare after already being called to speak four times compared to Sanders’ one, he expressed exasperation, saying, “Thank you. I wrote the damn bill.”

The candidates who spoke the most

Word count by candidate, according to debate transcripts

Source: Bloomberg Government transcripts

Aside from a few zesty exchanges that peppered the debate, it was largely an amiable one. Instead, quips replaced conflict—Klobuchar, while talking about how standards for female politicians are higher, said, “We could play a game called ‘name your favorite woman president,’” and Yang joked that running for president was not his first instinct because he “is not insane.”

They also helped each other out: Andrew Yang defended Tom Steyer and Steyer then thanked him.

Candidates did, however, spar over electability—the question of who would be the most formidable challenger to Trump next fall. The irony of that question, of course, was that the candidates’ fighting to stand out allowed Trump’s inevitable figure to creep back into the conversation.

“We cannot simply be consumed by Donald Trump, because if we are, you know what? We’re going to lose the election,” Sanders said. “Congress can walk and chew bubble gum at the same time. We can deal with Trump’s corruption, but we also have to stand up for the working families of this country.”

Everything the Candidates Discussed at the Atlanta Debate

The issues that dominated each debate

The candidates who spoke the most

The topics discussed during every moment of the debates