Politicos, Comics Grade John Delaney's Democratic Debate Showing

SILVER SPRING, MD — With a field of 20 Democratic candidates vying for quips and sounds bites in the party's presidential candidate debates Wednesday and Thursday nights in Miami, experts said the contenders needed to say something memorable, and get approval from the audience.

John Delaney, a former congressman from Maryland, did not check off both boxes during his time on camera Wednesday.

He jockeyed for air time with New York Mayor Bill de Blasio — who kept interrupting other candidates — and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts — who some watchers said dominated the first half of the debate.

Like the other nine candidates, Delaney was in the first half of the two-day Democratic debate, which aired live on NBC, MSNBC, and Telemundo on Wednesday evening. Round two starts Thursday night at 9 p.m. ET.

Lots of voters don't know this, but the former Maryland congressman was the first Democrat to announce for president, back in July 2017. His platform includes fostering business and technology, strengthening the social safety net and investing in infrastructure, along with reforming education, health care, and immigration.

When it comes to his mark on the 2020 campaign, RealClearPolitics' polling average shows that he only has the support of 0.4 percent of the Democratic primary electorate, according to Slate.

At Wednesday evening's debate, there were a lot of passionate and outspoken candidates on stage, including Warren, de Blasio, Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey, and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro.

Delaney — like many other less notable Democratic candidates — tried to get a word in whenever possible. It appeared to work in his favor when candidates were debating health care.

NBC debate commentator Lester Holt teed up the question for former Texas Rep. Beto O'Rourke: "Would you replace private insurance?"O'Rourke said no and began to explain that there should be a public option before being interrupted by de Blasio.

"Wait, wait, Congressman O'Rourke, private health insurance is not working for tens of millions of Americans when you talk about the co-pays, the deductibles, the premiums, the out-of-pocket expenses," de Blasio said. "Why are you defending a system that's not working?"

Delaney then injected himself into the conversation and defended O'Rourke saying: "I think we should be the party that keeps what's working and fixes what's broken."

The audience erupted in applause.

Some, in a more comical fashion than others, said Delaney put de Blasio in his place.

"(Bill) de Blasio's hectoring was unmemorable," David Freddoso wrote in an op-ed for The Washington Examiner. "What was much more memorable was that the mayor of the world's capital was then abruptly put in his place by some bald dude who seemed to have wandered onto the stage from nowhere."

Trevor Noah, host of Comedy Central's The Daily Show, agreed about what Delaney said and — ehrm — about him being bald.

"Oh! The short, bald dude who's also running for president just came out of nowhere and stole that topic and got an applause," Noah said after playing the clip. "Even the camera man was like, 'who's talking? Who is this person? Where are they?'"

"This guy came out of nowhere," Noah continued. "It's like in the Royal Rumble where a random dude comes in with a chair and is like — bang. And you're like, 'who is that?' 'I don't knooooow!'"

Because Delaney is one of the lesser known candidates, Noah said that the Democrat should say his name every time he wins the crowd over — kind of like DJ Khalid (you know, the guy who shouts "DJ KHALID!"at least five times in every song he produces?)

"Every time you end a statement," Noah says, "he should have been like, 'that's why I say pro-choice — JOHN DELANEEEEEEY, beep-beep-beep-beeeeep.'"

Injecting his opinion while candidates debated health care appeared to serve him well, but not on other issues.

When it came to the topic of undocumented family separation, Delaney decided to jump in and say his family had been separated. But, everyone just ignored him.

"My grandfather was actually separated from his family when he came to this country," Delaney tried to explain.

In response, Holt said: "We're going to talk about Iran right now."

When it comes to who won last night's debate, Warren seems to be the candidate to watch out for. The Massachusetts senator was one of the few to be noticed and elicited some of the biggest applause. In fact, Warren — who has been climbing in the polls on the back of a steady diet of policy over pomp — was the highest-polling candidate of the 10 on stage.

She received the most questions and got the third-most air time. The debate started with a question about economic inequality, Warren's bread-and-butter policy and passion, and she grasped the opportunity to make the first impression.

The New York Times said Warren "owned the first quarter," starting out strong.

"In the first segment, which focused on the economic issues on which Ms. Warren is particularly passionate, there was little contest," The Times said.

Fox News, which buried debate analysis under Trump mocking the television broadcast, said "the first Democratic debate was always destined to be about Elizabeth Warren, and she seized the initiative with the first question."

By the numbers, Warren was one of the most talkative candidates, coming in third behind Booker and O'Rourke in terms of the number of words spoken. Over the course of the night, Warren said 1,637 words, FiveThirtyEight reported, while Booker said 2,181 words and O'Rourke said 1,932 words.

Delaney said 1,060 words.

https://t.co/01rAtNoxua pic.twitter.com/JKixEyiHAb
— FiveThirtyEight (@FiveThirtyEight) June 27, 2019

Patch's Mike Carraggi contributed to this report.