Less than two months before the official start of the Democratic primaries in Iowa on February 3, the ruthless elimination race began to take effect. Only seven candidates had thus met the criteria of the party authorities (voting intentions and number of small donors) to participate in the sixth debate, organized in California by the public channel PBS and the Politico site.
This limited number produced more interesting exchanges than in previous debates in which the minutes were hotly contested between a dozen candidates. Benjamin and revelation of the race, the young mayor of South Bent (Indiana), Pete Buttigieg, a complete stranger at the start of the year, knew he was expected. A potential winner of the Iowa caucuses over the past few weeks, he has been subjected to virulent charges by two senators, Elizabeth Warren (Massachusetts) and Amy Klobuchar (Minnesota). The first because it competes with it among graduate voters. The second because he now appears to be the centrist alternative to race favorite, former Vice President Joe Biden, whom she dreams of playing.
Elizabeth Warren attacked him for a fundraiser targeting wealthy donors organized in an upscale vault in Napa Valley, California, questioning his ability to resist, if he were elected, the pressures of his benefactors. "The billionaires in the wine cellars should not choose the next president of the United States, mayor", she assured. Obviously prepared, the young mayor responded with equal vigor, pointing to the financial ease of the elected representative and recalling that she had transferred to her nomination campaign account sums collected under similar conditions for her re-election to the Senate. "This is the problem with purity tests that you cannot pass yourself", he replied.
The Minnesota senator, for her part, has criticized her regular criticisms of elected Washington officials, often presented as ineffective, highlighting her lack of experience, but Pete Buttigieg has not given in, defending firmly its positions, evoking its passage under the flags and its electoral course "Mike Pence's gay guy in Indiana", Vice President of Donald Trump. "We have to get out of the Washington mentality which measures an idea by the number of billions of dollars it adds to the budget or its audacity by the number of American citizens it can thwart", he had assured in an obvious attack targeting the candidates of the democratic left, before pleading for a vast rally open to the Republicans reluctant to Donald Trump.
