'His mistake was not saying I'm sorry': Biden supporters gather for debate watch party in Nashua

NASHUA, N.H. — On a night when former Vice President Joe Biden faced the toughest test of his campaign for the Democratic nomination, a small handful of Biden supporters gathered at the Peddler's Daughter, an Irish restaurant and pub on Main Street in downtown Nashua, for a debate watch party hosted by the Biden campaign.

The watch party did not go off without a hitch, as the single television showing the debate in the back of the pub had no volume. While music played over the speaker system and a larger group of mostly young people cheered on a Copa America soccer game at the bar, the Biden supporters relied upon closed captioning to follow the debate. 

Despite the lack of sound from the television, the watch party attendees remained in good spirits for the high-stakes first debate of the primary season. When Biden delivered his first line of the night, Lynne Daleb, a resident of Nashua and a New Hampshire native, exclaimed "I love Joe." 

Daleb explained before the start of the debate that she was a moderate Democrat and she liked that Biden was "a true Democrat" and "for the worker." She described Biden affectionately as "the kind of guy to shoot the breeze with" and disputed that he was a racist because of his remarks on segregationist senators earlier in the week. "That's Obama's buddy," she said.

Although most of the Biden supporters left the restaurant or stopped following along with the subtitles by the time of the exchange between their candidate and California Senator Kamala Harris more than an hour into the debate, Gail Hernandez, 59, of Wilton, New Hampshire said at the end of the night that she wished Biden had apologized. "His mistake was not saying 'I'm sorry.'"

Hernandez, who still supports Biden as the best candidate to stand up to Trump, said that the most exciting part of the night was scouting out potential running mates. She emphasized that he could "bring in other people" — not older white men like himself — to advance the progressive agenda. Currently out of work and looking for a new job, Hernandez supports a living wage. "I'm all for $15 an hour. $10 isn't enough."

Diane Dupre, a resident of Amherst, New Hampshire who voted for Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in the 2016 primary, also still holds several progressive policy preferences. She wants Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices and she praised the single-payer health care systems in Canada and Ecuador, where she recently traveled.

Dupre said however that circumstances have changed for the 2020 primary and defeating Donald Trump was her number one priority. She believed that Biden could persuade voters in the Midwest and the Bible Belt because he makes people feel "comfortable" and "safe." 

Whereas Dupre highlighted a possible map to the White House for Biden, Daleb stressed his popularity among older Americans. "Joe brings something to the table that the others can't" because "we still got a lot of the older generation" and he can "speak the language" of Baby Boomers, as well as Republican members of Congress like South Carolina Senator Lindsay Graham. 

Daleb, a vocal advocate for the Kurdish people on Twitter, also argued for a candidate with foreign policy experience. Daleb befriended a group of Kurdish refugees in the 1990s and has since taken up their cause as her own. She pointed out that protecting the Kurds from Middle Eastern dictators like Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Syria's Bashar al-Assad and Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan has historically been a bipartisan issue.

As the candidates proceeded into their closing statements, Hernandez said that she liked that there were so many candidates and that she watched both nights. She said she saw "a lot of diversity and a lot of energy" and she did not understand why pundits were "whining" about the size of the field.

Dupre, who was most concerned about "who do we think can win a general election," wanted to narrow the field and bring down the number of candidates in the debates, but only through polling. She did not want the party to intervene because "we don't have a Trump."

In search of a Democratic nominee that can win in New Hampshire and across the country, Dupre expressed confidence in her candidate. "I think it's Biden. I hope it's Biden," she said.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

'Really fired up': Warren campaign hosts debate watch party in Manchester

MANCHESTER, N.H. — At a debate watch party in downtown Manchester, the Warren campaign and a handful of local supporters gathered for the first televised debate of the 2020 primary, as Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren stood center stage as the highest-polling candidate.

The Warren campaign, highly touted as "out in front of the rest in terms of organization" by former Obama advisor David Axelrod in early February, turned out in full force to pack the Louisiana-themed restaurant decorated with blue-and-red "Win With Warren" signs. The campaign is reported to have more than 50 staffers on the ground in New Hampshire.

One of those staffers, a regional political director, explained before the debate that she is reaching out to elected officials, community leaders and local activists to hear feedback on her candidate's many plans. She said the Warren campaign was "open to critique" and echoed the maxim popularized by former Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill that "all politics is local."

She described the growing list of Warren supporters as "really fired up," a group that "spans in age range" from older residents struggling with retirement planning to younger couple dealing with student loans. She highlighted the student debt cancellation policy, but said that voters are connecting with many different policies put forward by the Warren campaign. "It's not just one thing," she said.

A couple minutes before the start time, State Representative Jackie Chreitien, who officially endorsed Warren later in the week, addressed the room to declare her support for the Massachusetts Senator. A mother of three children, Chreitien credited "a million reasons, a million plans" behind her decision, but cited the universal childcare policy of the Warren campaign, which would subsidize and regulate a nationwide network of facilities that would then charge families based on their ability to pay.

An organizer in Manchester, New Hampshire spoke next, telling the crowd that the struggle of her mother who emigrated from Taiwan reminded her of the struggle of Warren. "She has the lived experience to understand the plight of the working class and the plans to fix it," she said.

When the debate finally started, the Warren staffers and supporters applauded enthusiastically after each of her answers, as the Massachusetts Senator started strong with a well-reviewed and drama-free showing over the two-hour debate. As the other top-tier candidates prepared to take the stage in less than 24 hours, Warren emerged unscathed, well-positioned to ride her momentum from the early summer into July and August. 

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.

Welcome

Over the next eight weeks, I plan to see all 24 Democratic candidates for president in person on the campaign trail in New Hampshire.

The New Hampshire primary is the first in the nation and its results have changed the course of American political history. When anti-war candidate Eugene McCarthy almost defeated incumbent president Lyndon Johnson in 1968, Johnson declined to run for reelection. Bill Clinton revived his reputation as “the comeback kid” after a surprise second place finish in 1992 and businessman Donald Trump scored an overwhelming double-digit victory in 2016. No candidate since 1972 has won a major party nomination without finishing first or second in the Granite State.

While the stakes of the New Hampshire primary are always high, the 2020 Democratic contest is shaping up to be one of the most interesting in living memory. There is a large and diverse field of highly accomplished candidates, each articulating different visions and connecting with voters in new ways. The first debates — one of the most important events of a primary campaign according to Brookings Institution fellow Elaine Kamarck, author of Primary Politics: Everything You Need to Know About How America Nominates Its Presidential Candidates — begin today.

My journey also begins today. Along the way, I will track my progress here. I hope to answer questions about the state of the 2020 Democratic race, the inner workings of the New Hampshire primary, the role of campaigns and elections in general and the overall direction of American politics. I will write a combination of news reports, analysis pieces, literature reviews and personal reflections, all on the ground from New Hampshire.

I am a rising junior at Williams College in western Massachusetts. I am a political science major and I work for my student newspaper, the Record. I am based outside Keene, New Hampshire for the summer.

This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.