How the 2020 debates left their stamp on Democrats

[Bloomberg]( Follow Us [Get the newsletter]( Get Jonathan Bernstein’s newsletter every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe.]( As Democrats try to pass two massive bills containing all sorts of party priorities, but certainly not containing Medicare for All, the MSNBC host Chris Hayes [said on Twitter](: “Considering the situation Dems now find themselves in, partly borne of an improbable set of upset victories in GA to achieve the narrowest majority possible, a lot of the presidential primary debates on domestic policy look truly absurd." I think he’s missing some important points. It’s true that the moderators of those 2020 debates were a bit obsessed with small differences between health-care plans advanced by Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and others who wound up nowhere near the Oval Office. And that was frustrating to a lot of Democratic activists at the time. But the debates were only unsuccessful at what debates can’t do and were largely successful in what they can do. Debates can’t — and shouldn’t — determine who becomes the nominee. The presidency isn’t a debate team, and there’s no reason to believe that skill in these televised events is particularly useful to predicting either general election or governing success. Nor are debates contests of ideas, with the winner’s presentation becoming the party's agenda. What debates can accomplish is helping to push candidates to take positions on a range of public policy questions, and that in turn helps push the party towards consensus, when possible, or recognition of differences, when that’s what they have. Debates don’t do that alone, but they’re not a bad way of focusing candidates on policy. That happens regardless of which questions wind up getting asked; just the process of preparing for debates is sufficient. Candidates don’t do it alone; they work with governing professionals from inside and outside their party; with party-aligned groups; with activists; and more. Debates help a party make up its mind. And at the same time, the need to work with others within the party network, including those who wind up attaching themselves to the various candidates, is a way that individual candidates become party candidacies. And when they win? They become partisan presidents, adopting the party’s policy positions and priorities, and responsive to party actors rather than (as was once the case during the nadir of U.S. political parties in the 1960s and 1970s) just responsive to the candidate. That's such a strong force that it even accounted for much of what the Donald Trump presidency did. During a more normal presidency — Joe Biden’s or Barack Obama’s, for example — it accounts for even more. So much so that it's possible that most of the 2020 Democratic candidates would have had more or less the same policy agenda that Biden has had, in everything from the big-picture attempt to pass an infrastructure bill and a second partisan spending bill to the details of the dozens of individual policies included in that legislation. In order to win, the candidates had to adopt that agenda, or something close to it. But the outcomes of legislative efforts to enact that agenda depend on election results. Far less of the mainstream Democratic agenda will wind up as law than if the party’s margins in the Senate and House of Representatives were larger. Far more has already been enacted than would have been the case had Republicans retained their Senate majority. That’s not all about the debates. But it’s always a good time to remember that we're in an era of partisan presidencies, with the party’s choices more important than whatever particular ideas the president may have. Nominations define the parties. 1. Ragnhild Muriaas, Amy G. Mazur and Season Hoard at the Monkey Cage on [campaign funding and recruiting women to run for office](. 2. Rick Hasen on the congressional agenda to [fight election subversion](. 3. Philip Klein makes a good point about [deadlines and the Democratic agenda](. Bills can die, to be sure, even if there’s technically no reason they couldn’t be revived — but that doesn’t make this week any kind of hard-and-fast deadline for the big spending bills. 4. Jonathan Chait on [compromise and negotiations]( for the two big Democratic bills. 5. And my Bloomberg Opinion colleague Noah Smith on [Senator Joe Manchin, West Virginia and the Democratic agenda](. Get Early Returns every morning in your inbox. [Click here to subscribe](. Also subscribe to [Bloomberg All Access]( and get much, much more. You’ll receive our unmatched global news coverage and two in-depth daily newsletters, the Bloomberg Open and the Bloomberg Close. 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