Biden currently leads Democratic voter preference surveys for the party’s presidential nomination, but he was facing some of his biggest rivals before a live audience in Miami, Florida, with millions watching on national television.
He was joined in the debate by nine other presidential aspirants, including Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist; California Sen. Kamala Harris, a former state attorney general, and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of the Midwestern city of South Bend, Indiana.
In the early moments of the debate, Biden, Sanders and Harris all attacked Trump for his staunch support for a $1.5 trillion tax cut Congress enacted that chiefly benefited corporations and the wealthy.
“Donald Trump has put us in a horrible situation,” Biden said. “I would be going about eliminating Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the wealthy.” Sanders called for the elimination of $1.6 trillion of student debt across the country, while Harris said she would change the tax code to benefit the American middle class, not the wealthy.
Sanders attacked Trump in the most direct way of any of the Democratic contenders, declaring, “Trump is a phony, pathological liar and a racist.” He said Democrats need to “expose him as the fraud he is.”
Biden, President Barack Obama’s two-term running mate as vice president, twice has failed to win the party’s presidential nomination, in 1988 and 2008. But he has consistently led national polling this year, both over his Democratic rivals for the party nomination and over Trump in a hypothetical 2020 general election matchup.
Biden’s closest Democratic challengers are Sanders and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, the key contender among 10 on the debate stage Wednesday, when more than 15 million people tuned in to see the first major political event of the 2020 campaign.
Biden has attempted to portray himself as a steady alternative to the unpredictable Trump, one who would restore frayed U.S. relations with foreign allies and undo conservative domestic policies Trump has adopted.
But more progressive Democrats have questioned Biden’s bona fides and political history over four decades in Washington as the party’s key current figures have aggressively moved toward more liberal stances on a host of key policy issues, including health care and abortion, taxes and immigration.
Some critics also have suggested that Biden might be too old to become the U.S. leader. Now 76, Biden would be 78 and the oldest first-term president if he were to defeat the 73-year-old Trump and take office in January 2021. Trump often mocks him as “Sleepy Joe.”
Congressman Eric Swalwell of California jabbed at Biden, recalling that 32 years ago, when Biden first ran for president, Biden contended the U.S. needed to “pass the torch” to a new generation of leaders. Swalwell said Biden was right when he said that then and joked that “he’s right today.”
Biden laughed at the reference, responding, “I’m still holding on to that torch.”
In the Midwestern farm state of Iowa recently, Trump assessed his possible Democratic opponents, saying of Biden, “I think he’s the weakest mentally, and I think Joe is weak mentally. The others have much more energy.”
Biden, for his part, labeled Trump “an existential threat” to the U.S.
On Wednesday, Warren, a progressive lawmaker and one-time Harvard law professor, declared, “I want to return government to the people.”
Referring to major corporations, she added, “What’s been missing is courage, courage in Washington to take on the giants. I have the courage to go after them.”
Later, Warren said she supports a government-run health care system, as does Sanders, that could end the private insurance-based health care now used in the U.S. Some Democratic candidates and most Republicans, including Trump, oppose such a change as costly and a mistake for the country.
But Warren said, “Health care is a basic human right and I will fight for basic human rights.”
