Debate takeaway: Amy Klobuchar steps up.

Iowa elevated Pete Buttigieg. 

Amy Klobuchar

The New Hampshire Debate takes him down and replaces him with Amy Klobuchar.

Amy Klobuchar won the debate.

[Once again, I prepared this comment based on opinions formed by actually watching the debate and having observations, not by watching the post-debate commentary by the media.

In fact, the greatest political consequence of the debate is from that second experience, what we are told we saw, not what we saw. Hardly anybody actually watches. Lots more people are influenced by the commentary.]

Joe Biden is done. We speak kindly of people in their final illnesses, and why not? Joe Biden gives and receives hugs. The candidates ignored Hunter Biden, no use being cruel. The debate confirmed the story told by the Iowa's caucuses. Biden is the past. 

Someone else is the future. It appears to be Pete Buttigieg, and the debate was about the future. The sharpest attacks last night were on Buttigieg. They revealed problems Buttigieg can fix with time, but not immediately, which is a problem for him.

Besides, Democrats have options.

Inexperience. Buttigieg's thin record has never been a secret, but Buttigieg had unapologetically and forcefully defined it as a benefit, a fresh look, an alternative to the tired, failed policies of the past. At the debate Klobuchar made it an accusation, not a description.  It wasn't just a snipe or aside; newcomers are not qualified. I am not "a newcomer with no record," she said. "We have a newcomer in the White House, and look where that got us." 

Good old Joe, the has-been.

Joe Biden said Buttigieg was a risk."I do believe it’s a risk, to be just straight up with you, for this party to nominate someone who’s never held an office higher than a mayor of 100,000 people in Indiana."

Democrats had been very kind to one another, indirect in their criticisms, not wanting to lose second-choice supporters in the Iowa caucuses.  Democrats know Trump will not be kind. We began to see what Buttigieg would look like when someone made an accusation out of his resume.

Ties to corporate donors. The attacks on Buttigieg's relationship to money got sharper, too. Elizabeth Warren said she didn't "suck up to billionaires." She said her ambassadors wouldn't be drawn from the ranks of big donors.  Sanders added, "I don’t have 40 billionaires, Pete, contributing to my campaign, coming from the pharmaceutical industry, coming from Wall Street.”

This turned a simple reality of Buttigieg raising money from educated white elites into an accusation. "Suck up." Yikes. And he was named.

Race. The moderator asked a question in the form of an accusation. Marijuana arrests of black people went up during your tenure as mayor. This is bad. Explain yourself. Buttigieg's answer was complicated, saying policing was an attempt to focus on criminal violence where it was happening, injury and death to black victims. For once, Buttigieg's rhetorical gifts failed him and he wasn't able to turn this into a clear, compassionate, and thoroughly reasonable benefit to the black community. It looked like an excuse for an error and he appeared embarrassed, weak. A Huffington Post opinion writer called it "robotic and practiced rather than articulate and thoughtful." Chris Christie said Buttigieg had a "deer in the headlights" look. 

It was a bad night for Buttigieg, demonstrating that on this issue he fails the key test of replacing Joe Biden, electability. Biden said, "Mayor Buttigieg is a great guy and a real patriot ... [but] he was the mayor of a small city but has not demonstrated the ability to get a broad scope of support including among African Americans and Latinos."

Introducing, again, Amy Klobuchar. The very fact of her being on stage sent a message. She persisted. She is a viable option. Buttigieg did not fail last night, but the debate encounter served to position Amy Klobuchar as a solution to the weaknesses being revealed.

Too young and inexperienced? Klobuchar, age 59, was a prosecutor and is now a US Senator. Qualified.

Too tied in with financial elites?  Klobuchar' grandfather was a coal miner, her father an alcoholic and her mother taught 2nd grade: her log cabin credentials. And her campaign struggles with money.

NY Times: Most agree, Klobuchar won.

Race and the ability to unify Democrats? Klobuchar won in a purple state and won red counties in that state.

Klobuchar went to Yale and the University of Chicago Law School but sends out a very different vibe than does Pete Buttigieg, less elite, less Ivy League, less a validation of the meritocracy Democratic party.  The "meritocracy" vibe given off by Hillary isn't present with Klobuchar. 

New Hampshire could do it for her: elevate her above Pete Buttigieg as the successor to Biden.

If it happens it will be last night's debate that set that in motion. Or more exactly, it will be the interpretation of last night's debate that will set it in motion.