Overview

2020 Democratic Party Presidential Debates in Miami are the first two 2020 Democratic presidential primary debates held in late June 2019 at the Arsht Center in Miami, Florida.

Background

On June 13th, 2019, the Democratic National Committee announced the list of candidates that would participate in the first primary debates.^[8] The list of candidates includes:

Colorado Senator Michael Bennet
Former Vice President Joe Biden
New Jersey Senator Cory Booker
South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg
Former HUD Secretary Julián Castro
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio
Former Maryland Representative John Delaney
Hawaii Representative Tulsi Gabbard
New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
California Senator Kamala Harris
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
Washington Governor Jay Inslee
Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar
Former Texas Representative Beto O'Rourke
Ohio Representative Tim Ryan
Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders
California Representative Eric Swalwell
Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren
Writer and spiritual guru Marianne Williamson
Entrepreneur Andrew Yang

The first debates were set to be split in two nights, with a set of 10 appearing on each.

Developments

June 26th Debate

On June 26th, 2019, MSNBC^[1] aired the First Democratic Debate, which featured the first 10 of 20 Democratic candidates hoping to win the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidential candidate in the 2020 election. The first night included candidates de Blasio, Booker, Castro, Gabbard, Ryan, Klobuchar, Inslee, Delaney, O'Rourke and Warren. That evening an animation visualizing the fluctuation of Google search interest in the candidates was created on Flourish (shown below).

Beto O'Rourke Speaking Spanish

Beto O'Rourke Speaking Spanish refers to a series of jokes and memes about Democratic presidential candidate Beto O'Rourke speaking Spanish at the first presidential debate. In addition to jokes about his Spanish-language comments, some mocked the facial expression of opposing candidate Cory Booker watching O'Rourke speak.

NBC's Audio Difficulties

At one point during the debate, audio issues interrupted the moderators several times, leading NBC to take a commercial break (shown below).

Tulsi Gabbard vs. Tim Ryan

Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard had a brief exchange with Ohio Rep. Timothy Ryan, during which they debated the war in Afghanistan (shown below).

That evening, the official Google Trends Twitter^[2] feed posted search query maps of the United States before and after the election, showing that Elizabeth Warren was widely searched prior to the debate, but was overtaken by Tulsi Gabbard afterward (shown below).

Livestream Takedowns

On June 27th, Justin Whang posted a tweet^[3] condemning MSNBC takedowns of commentary streams (shown below).

June 27th Debate

The second night, candidates Williamson, Hickenlooper, Yang, Buttigieg, Biden, Sanders, Harris, Gillibrand, Bennet and Swalwell appeared on stage.

Kamala Harris vs. Joe Biden

During the debate, Harris confronted Biden about his voting record on legislation that ordered using busing to integrate schools in the 1970s, to which Biden responded that he had not opposed busing but rather "busing ordered by the Department of Education" (shown below).

Shortly after, Twitter user @MattBruenig tweeted a picture of Harris and Biden facing each other while Sanders is shown standing in the middle with the caption "meme it" (shown below).

Meanwhile, closeup screencaps of Harris addressing Biden were photoshopped and captioned with various jokes (shown below).

Also that evening, a tweet posted by Joe Biden's feed^[9] received numerous replies using images of Kamala Harris laughing (shown below).

Marianne Williamson

Marianne Williamson sparked many discussions on social media after criticizing the American health care system (shown below, left) and claiming she would "harness love" to defeat Trump (shown below, right).

Additionally, Williamson stated that the first issue she would tackle as president is to contact the prime minister of New Zealand and say "the United States of America is going to be the best place in the world for a child to grow up" (shown below).

Meanwhile, screenshots of Williamson addressing the other candidates paired with humorous captions began circulating on Twitter (shown below).

Shortly after, many of Williamson's old tweets began circulating on Twitter, leading user @ellievhall^[7] to post a collection of the messages (shown below).

That same evening, Google Trends tweeted^[8] a graphic revealing that Williamson ended the night as the top searched Democratic candidate (shown below).

On Reddit

That evening, Redditor therealdanhill submitted a post titled "Discussion Thread: 2020 Presidential Race Democratic Debates | Night 2" to /r/politics.^[4] An hour later, a second thread was created on the subreddit.^[6]

On 4chan

During the debate, a thread titled "Democratic Party Primary Debates Night 2" was created on 4chan's /pol/^[5] board (shown below).

Search Interest

External References