HANOVER, N.H. — Almost three hours into the second night of the Democratic presidential debates late Wednesday night, the few students who remained from a large debate watch party organized by the Harris campaign groaned each time a candidate, at the end of their closing statement, instructed viewers to visit their website.
"All they have to do is Google your name!" one student shouted at the television in the first-floor lounge of the Dartmouth College student center.
Colorado Senator Michael Bennet told his supporters to go michaelbennet.com. New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand directed hers to kirstengillibrand.com. New Jersey Senator Cory Booker and California Senator Kamala Harris referred theirs to corybooker.com and kamalaharris.com, respectively.
So when former Vice President Joe Biden asked his supporters to "go to Joe 30330," the students squinted the television, exchanged confused glances and finally burst into laughter. Others just buried their heads in their hands. "He meant to say text Joe to 30330," one explained.
The moment of dueling amusement and frustration with Biden largely reflected the general attitude among the students on Wednesday night, even as the former Vice President delivered a much better performance than his disastrous showing in the first debates. While the watch party of 25-30 people was organized by volunteers for the Harris campaign and entrepreneur Andrew Yang had his gang of supporters in the corner, Biden's up-and-down performance dominated the post-debate discussion.
"I have every confidence in Joe Biden's public speaking ability, but this shook my confidence in him a little bit," said Jenna Gallagher, who is deciding between "moderates" like Biden, Harris and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Zach Gorman, a supporter of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, went further and called the former Vice President "scary bad" in the debates. He pointed to Biden's inability to tell voters how to contact his campaign in the final seconds. "I couldn't name a winner," he said. "I just know the loser was Biden."
"It's an onslaught," said Jared Cape, a self-described "independent moderate" who is backing Buttigieg in the Democratic primary but expressed an openness to former Ohio Governor John Kasich if the Republican entered the presidential race. "Biden's going down."
The shift away from Biden among young people, who once viewed him favorably as the loyal sidekick to former President Barack Obama, appeared more about age than ideology at Dartmouth. The room erupted in laughter when Biden called New Jersey Senator Cory Booker "the president," when he referred to the Trans Pacific Partnership as "the TTP" and when he repeatedly stopped himself mid-sentence at the time limit.
Gorman, who acknowledged that his preferred candidate, Sanders, was "not as organized here as Harris or Warren," guessed that on campus there were a "very negligible number of Biden supporters." In addition to the viewing hosted by the Harris campaign, Gorman said he attended a watch party sponsored by the Warren campaign the previous night.
One of the volunteers for the Harris campaign who organized the Wednesday night watch party, Akosua Twum, said that she first learned about Harris from the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings in September, a cultural touchstone event on many college campuses. She said the California Senator asked the best questions of any her colleagues and said that she was "always going to be with her" after that day. Since then, Twum has phone-banked for Harris and tweeted "a lot" from a Dartmouth-for-Harris account.
Twum, who called Harris "really sharp with everything she does," reflected that her candidate turned in a "baseline" performance on Wednesday night. "Consistency is good," she said. "No one has really beat her in my mind."
Yet while other students noted that Hawaii Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard ranked among the winners of the night for her confrontation with Harris on criminal justice and few mentioned the California Senator in the same category, the conversation inevitably returned to Biden.
After praising Harris for "the position she put Joe Biden in" during the first debates, Twum observed that Booker "went really hard" on the former Vice President. Asked whether she was concerned that the attacks on Biden, the frontrunner for the Democratic nomination, could help President Donald Trump in a possible general election matchup, Twum maintained that the debates were a good test for the candidates. "If he can't take it, that's a sign," she said. "If he can't get through this, Trump is strangely successful at tearing people down."
Cape likewise said that he was not losing sleep over the attacks. "I don't necessarily think that he's going to win the nomination," he said.
Gallagher, the undecided voter, was more conflicted. She called herself "such an Obama person" and said that she "used to be all for Joe Biden," but wanted someone who was "really inspiring" and "a good public speaker." Midway through the debate, she expressed incredulity with the other candidates. "Like half their debate prep was how to wreck Joe!"
She called the attacks "smart individual campaign strategy" but feared the implications for the party and criticized "Kirsten Gillibrand's quote-pulling" from a 1980s childcare op-ed by Biden in particular. "I don't think it's great for the Democratic Party overall," she said.
Gallagher said that she is only seriously looking at the top ten candidates in the polls, as she does not view low-polling candidates like Gillibrand or Montana Governor Steve Bullock as viable contenders. She also ruled out Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar because of her public speaking and because her friend worked on Capitol Hill and heard horror stories about how she treats her staff.
Even after his night of rhetorical "stumbling" and face-palm moments, Biden remained in her top three alongside Harris and Buttigieg.
"A big part of me just wants more of the Obama years," Gallagher said. "So I think that's why I'm permitting him to make more mistakes than I'm allowing the other candidates to make."
This work is made possible by the Russell H. Bostert Memorial Fellowship at Williams College.
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