LOS ANGELES — The long-festering feud between Elizabeth Warren and Pete Buttigieg erupted Thursday night in a high-stakes debate that tested the strength of the Democratic Party’s shrinking pool of presidential contenders just six weeks before primary voting begins.
Buttigieg, the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has emerged as an unlikely presidential power player, gaining ground with a centrist message. Warren, the Massachusetts senator who has become his progressive foil, attacked Buttigieg’s fundraising practices. And Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who is competing with Buttigieg for moderate voters, challenged his limited governing experience.
The debate came a day after a highly contentious vote to impeach President Donald Trump, which showed in dramatic relief how polarized the nation is over his presidency. With the Republican-controlled Senate likely to acquit him, the stakes are high for Democrats to select a challenger who can defeat Trump in November.
The forum highlighted the choice Democrats will have to make between progressive and moderate, older and younger, men and women and the issues that will sway the small but critical segment of voters who will determine the election. The candidates sharply disagreed about the role of money in politics, the value and meaning of experience and the direction of the American health care system.
In the most pointed exchange, Warren zeroed in on Buttigieg’s recent private meeting with wealthy donors inside a California “wine cave.”
“Billionaires in wine caves should not pick the next president of the United States,” she charged.
Buttigieg, who has surged into the top tier of the Democratic Party’s 2020 primary in part because of his fundraising success, did not back down.
“We need to defeat Donald Trump,” he responded, noting that Trump’s reelection campaign has already accumulated hundreds of millions of dollars.
The focus on Buttigieg at the Los Angeles debate highlighted his strength in the Democratic Party’s turbulent primary contest just 46 days before voting begins, with polls showing him at or near the lead in Iowa’s kickoff caucus. But the confrontation also raised broader concerns about the direction of the race: Democrats are not close to unifying behind a message or messenger in their quest to deny Trump a second term.
In fact, as the debate revealed, the party is still consumed by a high-stakes tug-of-war between feuding factions that must ultimately come together in order to beat Trump. One side, led by Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, is demanding transformational change to the U.S. economy and political system. The other, led by former Vice President Joe Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar, prefers a more cautious return to normalcy after Trump’s turbulent reign.