New York Post columnist John Podhoretz saw things similarly, taking particular issue with the candidates’ far-left push on immigration. He said the candidates “spent far more time talking about how they would help illegal immigrants than about how they would help the voters they most need to win over” and that will benefit Trump.
(Fox News) An NBC News analyst declared President Trump the winner of the first Democratic presidential debate of the 2020 election cycle.
Author and reporter Jonathan Allen expressed surprise that Trump emerged “largely unscathed” as the field of 10 candidates mostly avoided direct attacks on him.
Allen said the Democrats seemed more focused on positioning themselves furthest to the left to win over primary voters, rather than appealing to the swing voters that decided the 2016 election.
“For long stretches, it seemed, they completely forgot about the man who has been at the center of pretty much every discussion among Democrats for the last two-plus years — the man they’re competing to take on next year. The obvious reason: The motivation to beat each other was, on this night, more urgent than defeating Trump — a life-or-death moment for some of their campaigns. Trump was the chief beneficiary of that dynamic,” Allen wrote.