The evening ended with closing statements from Warren and Biden. Warren talked about gun violence, which wasn’t addressed tonight. On that issue, like so many others, Americans agree on what should happen and leaders know what to do, she said. The reason action isn’t taken, Warren said, is corruption. The government works “better for big drug companies than it does for people trying to fill a prescription,” she said. Then she touted her anti-corruption plan and her willingness to advocate for major systemic change.

Biden followed by bringing up Obama, this time in the context of the corruption Warren referenced. “I hope we weren’t talking about Barack Obama and his spotless administration,” he said. He ended with his usual “pick-your-head-up,” optimistic refrain.

“It’s time to remember who you are. Get up. Let’s take back this country and lead the world again,” Biden said, before raising his voice for his conclusion. “It’s within our power to do, get up and take it back.”

“Let me say a word about myself,” Sanders said, “unusual as it may seem.”

The personal anecdote he offered embodies a distinct shift in tone for Sanders, who has long had a reputation for stubbornly delivering uncompromising stump speeches about economic inequality. But in recent weeks — and especially since his Oct. 1 heart attack — Sanders has relaxed.

In campaign stops with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) and again during the debate, he has shared more details from his past and has even attempted a few jokes. Midway into the debate, as Biden recounted how North Korean leader Kim Jong Un compared him to a rabid dog, Sanders interjected, “Other than that, you like him.”

In his final remarks, Sanders brought up his father, an immigrant “who came to this country without a nickel in his pocket.”

“I have a sense of the immigrant experience,” Sanders said, adding that he’d stand up for undocumented immigrants.

He then told the story of when he was arrested as a college student and civil rights activist, saying he’s been “committed to the fight against all forms of discrimination.”

“I believe an administration that will look like America will end the divisiveness brought by Trump and bring us together,” he said.

After surviving much of the debate, Buttigieg faced some heat in the final 15 minutes.

Klobuchar said he talks a big game but lacks federal experience. “Washington experience is not the only experience that matters,” Buttigieg shot back.

Buttigieg also faced an attack from Gabbard, who claimed he wanted to send troops to fights cartels in Mexico. Both Buttigieg and Gabbard have served in the military.

“That is outlandish,” said Buttigieg, accusing her of taking him out of context. He then attacked Gabbard for her comments on Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad, prompting gasps from the crowd.

Stacey Abrams, the former minority leader of the Georgia House of Representatives who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, loomed large at Wednesday’s debate.

That’s not a surprise, given the debate’s location in her home state. But there’s another reason. Abrams, who enjoys star power in the party’s liberal wing, has consistently been floated as a possible vice-presidential pick. And she has not tamped down the talk.

During an appearance at the University of Iowa this month, the Georgia Democrat, who came within fewer than 55,000 votes of becoming the nation’s first black female governor, was asked whether she would be willing to serve as vice president.

“I’m happy to do so,” she replied.

She was invoked several times during the debate, with candidates describing her narrow loss last year — in a contest that they claim was marred by voter suppression — as an example of the importance of restoring voting rights.

Klobuchar said Georgia’s leadership would be different if a slate of reforms, including automatic voter registration at age 18, had been in place at the time of her race.

“Stacey Abrams would be governor of this state right now,” she said.

Booker made a similar point, describing her loss as a case study in the consequences of voter suppression.

Yang used his closing statement to deliver a stark warning about the vanishing American dream, which he said his parents once chased. Instead of building on the success of his parent’s generation, today’s leaders are leaving young people an intolerable future, he said.

“Our kids are not all right,” Yang said. “They’re not all right because we’re leaving them a future that is far darker than the lives that we have led as their parents.”

He warned that the United States is not prepared for what he described as the “greatest economic transformation in our country’s history.” Trump, he suggested, was a symptom of the dislocation that comes with that transformation.

In answering a question about one of the issues most important to Democrats — abortion — Booker invoked another: voting rights.

“This is a voter suppression issue right here in this great state of Georgia,” Booker said, pointing out that the state passed one of the country’s strictest abortion bans this year. “It was the voter suppression, particularly of African American communities, that prevented us from having a governor — Stacey Abrams, right?”

Just like combating abortion restrictions, Booker argued, other Democratic policies will be difficult to execute without addressing voting rights. Buttigieg agreed, saying that Congress should pass H.R. 1, the sweeping package of voting reforms, and designate election days federal holidays. He also repeated his call to abolish the electoral college.

Klobuchar hewed to more moderate fixes, including requiring states to use backup paper ballots when voting.

Then, he abandoned his prepared remarks in favor of impromptu words inspired by someone in the audience – Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). He told the story of the lawyer who helped his family find a home when his parents were subject to racial discrimination. Booker said he asked that lawyer why he decided to help families like his stand up to discrimination. That lawyer told him he was inspired by Lewis’s role in the march across the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, Ala., a seminal moment in the Civil Rights movement.

“We need a leader that can inspire us to get up and fight again,” Booker said. “If you give me a chance to lead, I will cause what John Lewis says is good trouble. I will challenge us. I will ask more from you than any other president has ever asked before, because we need to mobilize a new American movement. Keep me on this stage. Keep me on this race. It is time we fight and fight together.”

Democrats claimed abortion rights as a winning issue but mostly dodged a question about how to deal with members of their own party who take a different position — and win.

Warren was asked about John Bel Edwards, the Democratic governor of Louisiana who was recently reelected in a state that favored Trump by nearly 20 percentage points in 2016. Edwards this year signed into law a bill banning abortion after a fetal heartbeat can be detected — part of a wave of antiabortion bills that represent a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

“Protecting the right of a woman to be able to make decisions about her own body is fundamentally what we do and what we stand for as a Democratic Party,” the Massachusetts senator said.

Pressed for an answer on what to do about Democrats like Edwards who have run on in culturally conservative states, Warren seemed to suggest that she wouldn’t seek to draw rigid lines, saying, “I’m not here to drive anyone out of this party. I’m not here to build fences.” Yet she also vowed: “I believe that abortion rights are human rights.”

Biden argued that he has strong support from the African American community, saying “I come out of the black community in terms of my support.”

“I have more people supporting me in the black community that have announced for me because they know me, they know who I am,” Biden continued. “Three former chairs of the Black Caucus. The only black African-American woman who had ever been elected to the United States Senate.”

The first African-American woman to be elected to the Senate, Carol Moseley Braun, has endorsed Biden.

The second, Harris, was standing a few feet away from him.

“That’s not true!” Harris exclaimed through a smile, as Biden corrected himself to say he meant “the first” African-American woman elected to the Senate. Harris and Booker chuckled incredulously as Biden finished his defense, saying he was picked as vice president “because of my relationship, long-standing relationship with the black community.”

Booker pivoted from a question about Trump’s wall to a comment about candidates making meaningful connections with minority communities. “I have a lifetime of experience with black voters,” Booker said. “I’ve been one since I was 18.”

Booker suggested black voters want “authentic connections” with their candidates, and used Biden’s recent comments about the dangers of legalizing marijuana as an example of a lack of understanding of the issues that affect those communities. Biden, unlike other candidates, has said he doesn’t support legalizing marijuana because studies don’t prove it’s not a gateway drug.

“I thought you might’ve been high when you said it,” Booker said.

Biden defended himself, saying, “I think we should decriminalize marijuana, period. I think everyone anyone who has a record should be let out of jail. Their records expunged. … But I do think it makes sense based on data that we should study what the long-term effects are for the use of marijuana.”

Then Biden issued a somewhat garbled defense of his appeal to African American voters.

“With more African Americans under criminal supervision in America than all the slaves since 1850, do not roll up into communities and not talk directly to issues that are going to relate to the liberation of children.” — Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)

There are several problems with this claim. First, as Booker framed it, it’s simply wrong. The 1850 census counted 3.6 million slaves. African Americans made up 2.3 million, or 34 percent, of the total 6.8 million correctional population in 2014.

A Booker spokeswoman as evidence sent us a link to a 2014 PolitiFact fact check about a different claim – that more black men are now in prison than were slaves in 1850. “There were about 1.68 million African American men under state and federal criminal justice supervision in 2013, 807,076 more than the number of African American men who were enslaved in 1850,” the fact check said, rating it “true.”

But that’s not what Booker said.

Moreover, even if the black men comparison is correct in terms of raw numbers, it’s still misleading because the U.S. population has soared since 1850, as our colleagues at Wonkblog noted in 2015. The census that year found that roughly nine in 10 of the nation’s 3.6 million black people were enslaved. By contrast, one in 11 black people is under correctional supervision today, according to the Pew Charitable Trusts.

A potentially tense moment erupted late in the debate, when Harris was given a chance to talk about a criticism she leveled at Buttigieg earlier this week. Harris took the Buttigieg campaign to task for using a stock photo of a mother and child in Kenya to promote a plan for African Americans.

Harris declined to do so, saying Buttigieg had apologized.

She then challenged her party to work harder to address racial inequities, do more outreach to black women and “rebuild the Obama coalition.” Harris would be the country’s first black female president.

The exchange also turned personal when Buttigieg, who is gay, referred to his sexuality in the context of discrimination. “While I do not have the experience of ever having been discriminated against because of the color of my skin, I do have the experience of sometimes feeling like a stranger in my own country,” said Buttigieg.

Biden, whose own conduct toward women has been scrutinized, said he has a strong track record of addressing sexual and physical violence toward women.

Responding to a question about legislative solutions to the harassment and abuse of women brought to light by the #MeToo movement, Biden said he would “make sure we pass” the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act, which he helped craft as a senator. The bill is currently stalled in the Senate.

“We have to fundamentally change the culture, the culture of how women are treated,” Biden said.

He also touted his role in promoting the “It’s On Us” campaign, which seeks to combat sexual assault on college campuses. He said the most important step is to “get men involved.”

He said it was a “gigantic issue,” but he did not offer new plans or proposals.

Democrats addressed the issue of white-supremacist violence, which federal law enforcement officials have described as a deepening problem in the United States.

Yang said the first step is acknowledging that such violence amounts to domestic terrorism, so that the Department of Justice can properly track and measure it. He suggested that the problem required efforts targeting young men in particular, telling the story of an “anti-hate activist” who had turned the corner after being radicalized as a 14-year-old.

Gabbard, meanwhile, called for a full-scale overhaul of the criminal justice system, addressing topics ranging from the war on drugs to the bail system. She said more needs to be done by the federal government to weed out violence.

“Leadership starts at the top,” she said.

Neither candidate used the question to assail Trump, who has previously faced criticism from Democrats for using rhetoric that appears to have inspired acts of mass violence or attempted violence, including in El Paso over the summer.

Sanders said he is “pro-Israel” but that that stance is no longer “good enough.”

“I am pro-Israel, but we must treat the Palestinian people as well with the respect and dignity that they deserve. What is going on in Gaza right now where youth unemployment is 70 or 80 percent is unsustainable,” said Sanders, who has often distanced himself from his fellow Democrats as a more outspoken advocate for the Palestinian people.

Sanders also suggested the United States should bring Iran and Saudi Arabia together “and say we are sick and tired of us spending huge amounts of money and human resources because of your conflict.”

The candidates took a hard line against Saudi Arabia, issuing stern denunciations of the Saudi government over the brutal killing of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. They also bashed Trump’s response to the killing.

“When the president did not stand up the way he should to that killing and that dismemberment of a journalist with an American newspaper, that sent a signal to dictators ... and that’s wrong,” said Klobuchar.

Some on stage also said they would rethink U.S.-Saudi relations. “I would make it very clear, we were not going to in fact sell more weapons to them,” said Biden.

Sanders said that Saudi Arabia “is not a reliable ally. We have got bring Iran and Saudi Arabia together in a room with American leadership.”

Yang scored one of the night’s biggest laugh lines when he asked, if elected, what he would say in his first call with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

“Well first, I’d say, ‘I’m sorry I beat your guy,” Yang said to chuckles and cheers.

“Or, not sorry,” he added, before pivoting to the issue of Russian interference in U.S. elections.

“Second, I would say the days of meddling in American elections are over,” he continued. “And we will take any undermining of our democratic processes as an act of hostility and aggression.”

He also said he’d recommit to American alliances and partnerships, including NATO. Leading a coalition of countries, he argued, is the most effective way to combat international bad actors. He also criticized China for its treatment of the Uighurs and response to the Hong Kong demonstrations.

Harris and Biden both used questions about foreign policy to assail Trump for his behavior on the world stage.

Harris put it bluntly. “Donald Trump got punked,” the senator from California said, with respect to nuclear negotiations with North Korea.

Biden put it this way: “This guy has no idea what he’s doing.”

But neither candidate clearly addressed the question they were asked. Harris did not explain how she would weigh concessions in the interest of conducting bilateral summits. And Biden did not say what he would do differently from former president Barack Obama to move past the decades-long stalemate with North Korea and make progress toward denuclearization.

When asked about climate change, Steyer – who has spent millions of his own dollars on environmental causes – accused the top-polling candidates of not prioritizing the issue.

“I’m the only person on this stage that will say climate is the number one priority for me. Vice President Biden won’t say it. Senator Warren won’t say it,” Steyer said. “It’s a state of emergency. And I would declare a state of emergency on day one. I would use the emergency powers of the presidency. I know that we have to do this.”

Biden responded by bringing up Steyer’s history with fossil fuel companies. His venture-capital fund invested in them before Steyer divested and began his environmental activism.

“I don’t really need a lecture from my friend. While I was passing the first climate change bill … my friend was producing more coal mines and produced more coal around the world, according to the press, than all of Great Britain produces,” Biden said.

Steyer and Warren, who have sparred on other issues, appeared to agree on the root of the housing crisis: a lack of units. They also agreed on the solution: a commitment to build more.

Steyer, hailing from California, used his home state as an example. “It starts with a homeless crisis that goes all through the state,” he said. “But it also includes skyrocketing rents that affect every single working person in the state of California.”

He said new housing must be built with an eye toward sustainability, affordability and effective urban planning.

Warren agreed, saying that the country’s housing problem was on the “supply side.” But she also argued that any new housing plan must address redlining, the racist real estate practice that reinforced residential segregation.

Booker, who was once a tenants rights lawyer, said his plan would help combat gentrification by creating a tax credit for those who pay more than a third of their income in rent. This, he said, would prevent the pattern of rising housing costs pushing low-income families out of their longtime neighborhoods.

Booker, a sitting senator, sought to put this focus on a different stage of his career — his days as mayor of Newark, N.J.

“I happen to be the other Rhodes Scholar mayor on this stage,” he said at one point, a reference to Buttigieg. Soon, Booker returned to the topic of his mayoral record during a discussion on housing.

Booker also pointed out that he was mayor of the “largest city in my state,” which some on social media also interpreted as a dig at Butigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Ind. South Bend is the fourth-most-populous city in Indiana.

“There are only two countries in the world that don’t have paid family leave for new moms: the United States of America and Papua New Guinea. That is the entire list and we need to get off this list as soon as possible.”’ — Andrew Yang

It may seem like a surprising statistic but Yang is correct, according to a March report from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development. Paid maternity leave is also now guaranteed in every country except Papua New Guinea and the United States, the report said.

Sanders was asked about the “lock him up” chants directed at Trump at a World Series game last month. Those chants mimic the “lock her up” chants Republican voters levied at 2016 nominee Hillary Clinton throughout the campaign.

Some prominent Democrats have argued that members of their party should not emulate the practices of their opponents. Sanders did not disavow the chants, which have emerged from crowds at his events in recent weeks. Instead, he expressed empathy for their sentiments.

“What the American people are saying is nobody is above the law,” Sanders said. “And I think what the American people are also saying is, in fact, if this president did break the law, he should be prosecuted like any other individual who breaks the law. But at the end of the day, what we need to do is to bring our people together, not just in opposition to Trump.”

Biden wasn’t asked about those chants directly. But when asked about whether he would support a criminal investigation into Trump after he leaves the White House, Biden said he would let his Justice Department make that decision.

“I would not direct my Justice Department like this president does. I’d let them make their independent judgment,” Biden said.

Then he pivoted to the chants. “I don’t think it’s a good idea that we mock that, that we that we model ourselves after Trump and say, ‘lock him up.’” Biden said. “It’s about civility. We have to restore the soul of this country. That’s not who we are. That’s not who we have been. That’s not who we should be.”

Yang got personal in an answer about child care and paid family leave, saying that he has two young children, one of whom is autistic and has special needs.

“We need to start supporting our kids and families from the beginning,” he said, promising that paid family leave would be one of the first issues he tackles as president.

There are only two countries in the world don’t provide paid leave for new mothers, he said: the United States and Papua New Guinea.

“That is the entire list,” he said. “And we need to get off this list as soon as possible.”

He also said Americans simply need more resources on hand, pivoting to his signature “freedom dividend,” his proposal for a universal basic income of $1,000 per month. That would give parents the opportunity to pay for child care, he said, or to make the decision to “stay home with the child.”

“It’s breaking families’ backs,” the entrepreneur-turned-presidential aspirant said of the costs of child care.

“I have led the way on voting and I can tell you right now one solution that would make a huge difference in this state would be allow every kid in the country to register to vote when they turn 18. If we had a system like this and we did something about gerrymandering and we stopped the voting purges and we did something significant about making sure we don’t have money in politics from the outside, Stacey Abrams would be governor of the state right now.” — Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)

Many Democrats claim Stacey Abrams lost the Georgia governor’s race because of racially motivated voter suppression. Many Republicans claim that there’s no evidence for that assertion and that their candidate won fair and square. In a previous fact check, we talked to experts and took a close look at the data.

Brian Kemp, Abrams’s Republican opponent who is now governor, was basically in charge of running his own election because he was Georgia’s secretary of state at the time and declined to recuse himself.

Kemp oversaw an aggressive effort to purge voters, with nearly 700,000, or 10 percent, removed from the rolls in the year before the election. “For an estimated 107,000 of those people, their removal from the voter rolls was triggered not because they moved or died or went to prison, but rather because they had decided not to vote in prior elections,” according to a report by American Public Media.

But there’s a counterargument, too. Even if every provisional ballot not counted and every rejected absentee ballot had been awarded to Abrams, it would not have overcome Abrams’s 55,000-vote deficit. The 2018 turnout was far greater than any previous midterm, according to FiveThirtyEight, and more African Americans voted in 2018 than in 2016.

Where you land depends on how you view the wide range of pertinent evidence. Klobuchar suggested her statement was a factual claim, not in dispute, though it’s really more of an opinion.

Buttigieg was confronted with one of the most common criticisms of his candidacy: that he lacks the experience necessary to be president.

He conceded that his is “not traditional, establishment Washington experience” but argued that is actually an advantage.

“We need somebody who can go toe-to-toe, who actually comes from the kinds of communities that he’s been appealing to,” Buttigieg said. “I don’t talk a big game about helping the working class while helicoptering between golf courses with my name on them.”

“I don’t even golf,” he quipped, adding that he is “literally the least wealthy person on this stage.”

Klobuchar, who has said a woman with Buttigieg’s qualifications likely wouldn’t be taken as seriously as a candidate, said that she considered Buttigieg qualified, but maintained that “women are held to a higher standard.”

“Otherwise, we could play a game called ‘Name Your Favorite Woman President,’” she said to laughter.

“And I think any working woman out there, any woman at home knows exactly what I mean,” Klobuchar said. “We have to work harder, and that’s a fact.”

On a day when the country’s sharp divides were on clear display in the impeachment proceedings that continued on Capitol Hill, two of the candidates sought to strike unifying notes.

“The next president, whoever they are, is going to have be someone who can heal and bring this nation together,” said Booker.

“We have to unify this country,” Biden said, adding that he was was best positioned to accomplish that.

In normal times, such remarks would not be controversial. But those messages have run into some resistance in the Trump era from Democrats who don’t buy the notion that Republicans would cooperate with the next president if Trump loses.

On the other hand, Biden has held a lead in many public polls by adhering to his message and wagering that voters will want to turn the page on the fierce combat of the past four years rather than waging new battles in their wake.

Gabbard and Harris feuded over the state of the Democratic Party. Gabbard said she wants to rebuild the Democratic party so that it “actually hears the voices of Americans who are struggling all across this country,” and called for an end to regime-change wars. “As president,” Gabbard said, “I will end this foreign policy and these regime change or has worked to end this new Cold War, an arms race, and instead invest our hard earned taxpayer dollars, actually, into serving the needs of the American people.”

Harris, when asked to respond, threw several punches, taking particular issue with Gabbard’s criticism of the party.

“I think that it’s unfortunate that we have someone on the stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama…who has spent full time criticizing people on this stage,” Harris said.

She also accused Gabbard of cozying up to Trump adviser and white nationalist Steve Bannon and criticized her long-standing reluctance to call Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad a war criminal.

“The president had to confess in writing, in court, to illegally diverting charitable contributions that were supposed to go to veterans.” — Pete Buttigieg

This is false.

In a civil complaint filed in June 2018, then-Attorney General Barbara D. Underwood of New York charged that the now-defunct Donald J. Trump Foundation had violated a federal law known as the Johnson Amendment, which bars charities from supporting candidates for office.

Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign “extensively directed and coordinated the Foundation’s activities in connection with a nationally televised charity fundraiser for the Foundation in Des Moines, Iowa on January 28, 2016,” Underwood charged.

The fundraiser was billed as an effort to “raise funds for veterans’ organizations,” but the Trump campaign commandeered nearly $2.8 million in donations and “dictated the manner in which the Foundation would disburse those proceeds, directing the timing, amounts and recipients of the grants.”

The president settled the lawsuit, but did not admit liability. A New York state judge on Nov. 7 noted in a court order that “the Funds did ultimately reach their intended destinations, i.e., charitable organizations supporting veterans.”

As FactCheck.org reported, “donations totaling $2.825 million were given to 34 veterans organizations between January 2016 and June 2016.” Here’s a list of the 34 organizations, which includes Amvets and the Green Beret Foundation.

Steyer defended his decision to pour tens of millions of dollars into his own campaign while at the same time criticizing the role of money in politics.

The question has taken on added significance as a second billionaire, former New York City mayor Mike Bloomberg, made moves to enter the race.

Steyer, a former hedge fund investor and an early impeachment advocate, pointed to his support for liberal causes, ranging from youth voter registration to efforts to combat climate change.

“What I’ve done over the last decade is to put together coalitions of ordinary American citizen to take on unchecked corporate power,” he said. “We have a broken government in Washington, D.C.”

The Democrat didn’t explain what moved him to pivot from these undertakings to a presidential bid, but he did receive some support from Yang, who piped up at the end of Steyer’s answer to say of his well-heeled rival, “Tom is one of the good ones.”

Viewers got a glimpse of the sharp divisions over health care that have repeatedly roiled the race. Buttigieg, who advocates expanding Obamacare, attacked Warren for favoring a more dramatic shift to Medicare-for-all, cutting her no slack for her recent proposal to ease the country into the system gradually.

“Whether we wait three years, as Senator Warren has proposed, or whether you do it right out of the gate,” Buttigieg argued, it’s not an approach that unifies the country.

The moment highlighted the candidates’ eagerness to stoke fights on health care. Warren underscored her recently unveiled plan, emphasizing the intermediate steps she would take and how she would leave Medicare-for-all for the third year of her administration.

Her pitch represented a shift away from Sanders. Sanders, by contrast, repeated his more urgent calls to pass Medicare-for-all.

Biden, who like Buttigieg favors expanding Obamacare over Medicare-for-all, said Medicare for all “couldn’t pass in the United States Senate.”

The evening’s first major policy rift opened between Warren and Booker, who sparred over Warren’s “wealth tax,” which would tax the country’s wealthiest people.

“Doing a wealth tax is not about punishing anyone,” Warren said. “It’s about saying, ‘You built something great in this country? Good for you’ … All of us helped pay for it.”

Booker pushed back, saying he agreed that the tax code needs reform, but added, “I don’t agree with the wealth tax the way Elizabeth Warren puts it.” Booker argued that that Democrats should spend more time discussing how to “give people opportunities to create wealth, to grow businesses.”

“That’s what our party has to be about as well,” Booker said.

But Warren argued that her tax plan would do that by allowing the government to invest new revenue in universal child care and the cancellation of student loan debt. “We can invest in an entire generation,” she said.

“I have proposed a 2 cent wealth tax. That is a tax for everybody who has more than $50 billion dollars in assets. Your first $50 billion is free and clear, but your 50 billionth and first dollar you gotta pitch in two cents. And when you hit a billion dollars, you gotta pitch in a few pennies more.” — Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)

Warren’s “Ultra-Millionaire Tax” would apply to households with a net worth of $50 million or more, essentially the wealthiest 75,000 households. (She misspoke when she said $50 billion.) They would be charged 2 percent of every dollar of net worth above $50 million, unless they’re billionaires.

Households with $1 billion or more in assets would start paying 3 percent on assets above $1 billion. At least that was in Warren’s first iteration of her tax plans. She said this tax would raise $2.75 trillion over 10 years. But to help fund her plan for universal health care, she recently announced that she would also charge another 3 percent to billionaires, for a total of 6 percent. So that’s six pennies.

“By asking billionaires to pitch in 6 cents on each dollar of net worth above $1 billion, we can raise an additional $1 trillion in revenue,” Warren said in explaining how she would fill the $20.5 trillion hole created by her Medicare-for-all proposal. While 6 percent a year may not seem like much, it would add up to more than 50 percent over 10 years for billionaires.

Sanders was asked how central President Trump’s conduct should be to the Democrats’ 2020 campaign.

He first said Trump might be “the most corrupt president in the history of America.” Then he issued a warning. “We cannot simply be consumed by Donald Trump,” Sanders said. “If we do that, we will lose the election.” Sanders listed a variety of pressing issues facing Americans, including the vast numbers of people without health insurance and homelessness.

That rhetoric echoed Sanders’s stump speech.

Buttigieg offered a similar perspective when asked the same question moments later. “We are absolutely going to confront this president for his wrongdoing, but we are also each running to be the president who will lead this country after the Trump presidency comes to an end,” Buttigieg said. “We are going to have to unify a nation that will be as divided as ever. And while doing it, address big issues that didn’t take a vacation for the impeachment process or for the Trump presidency as a whole.”

Biden, who has made his electability and bipartisan record a centerpiece of his campaign, was asked how he would work with the Republicans currently rallying around Trump’s attacks on him and his son.

The former vice president urged voters to think ahead to the general election, when the nominee will have to go to swing states “like Georgia and North Carolina and other places and get a Senate majority.”

At the same time, he acknowledged that he has been a target of Republican ire, trying to pitch this as an asset. He said he has learned from the impeachment hearings that, “Donald Trump doesn’t want me to be the nominee.” The fear of going toe-to-toe with him, Biden said, was the reason he “held up the aid,” referring to stalled assistance to Ukraine as his associates were pressing the government in Kyiv to announce an investigation into the Bidens.

Another lesson, Biden said, without going into detail, is that “Vladimir Putin doesn’t want me to be president.”

Impeachment, which has been on the minds of Democrats across the country, was the first topic of the debate. Warren said she would try to convince her Senate Republican colleagues to convict Trump, in part by encouraging them to read the Mueller report.

She also sought to highlight Ambassador Gordon Sondland’s status as a Trump donor, and pivoted to her alternate vision of how ambassadorships would be doled out in her administration.

Warren said she would not “give away ambassador posts to the highest bidders” and accused Trump of engaging in “corruption,” underscoring a core theme of her campaign.

“You’ve got 500,000 people sleeping out on the street.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)

The way Sanders frames this is exaggerated. His number came from a single-night survey done by the Department of Housing and Urban Development to measure the number of homeless people. For a single night in January 2018, the estimate was that 553,000 people are homeless.

But the report also says that two-thirds — nearly 360,000 — were in emergency shelters or transitional housing programs; the other 195,000 were “unsheltered” — i.e., on the street, as Sanders put it. The number has been trending down over the past decade; it was 650,000 in 2007.

Here are the four major health-care plans in the Democratic presidential race, from least to most aggressive:

Biden’s plan would not be as disruptive or expensive as single-payer, but it would also leave millions of Americans without health insurance and not eliminate medical bills.

Biden’s plan would automatically enroll in the government plan the approximately 5 million Americans who live in poverty in states that did not expand Medicaid. He would also make the federal subsidies under Obamacare substantially more generous, giving middle-class tax credits to reduce their premium charges. His plan contains other changes, such as outlawing surprise medical billing, using antitrust powers to break up health-care corporations and limiting prescription drug prices.

Buttigieg proposes doing more than Biden in a few small but important ways. Unlike Biden, Buttigieg is also pushing a hard cap on out-of-pocket costs for seniors in the existing Medicare system.

Perhaps the key difference between these moderates is that Buttigieg would automatically enroll people in plans on the public option if they’re eligible. He is silent on what happens to people who refuse to pay after being automatically enrolled, but says he will create a backstop fund to pay providers “for unpaid care to patients who are uninsured.”

Buttigieg’s plan, like Biden’s, is estimated to cost about $1 trillion over 10 years, far less than the $30 trillion sticker shock that comes with the liberals’ single-payer plans.

Warren’s public option would be substantially more aggressive than that of either Biden or Buttigieg. She would automatically enroll everyone younger than 18 into the plan and not charge them any premiums, guaranteeing free insurance to all children. It would also be free for everyone earning 200 percent of the federal poverty line (about $51,000 for a family of four). The existing Medicare program would also expand dental benefits to its existing population.

But Warren’s plan stops short, at least until year three, of pushing for a single-payer plan that would move all Americans — including the 150 million or so who get their insurance through their employer — onto the government plan.

Unlike Sanders, Warren has insisted she can pay for single-payer without raising taxes on the middle class, instead putting the burden on the wealthy and businesses. Some economists have questioned that claim.

Under this Medicare-for-all system, every American would be guaranteed medical, dental, vision and auditory care with virtually no deductibles, premiums or co-payments of any form. There is no apparent limit on how many times people could go to the doctor or the dentist and have the government pick up the tab.

Under Sanders’s plan, private insurance companies would all but evaporate in four years. Sanders’s bill would begin by eliminating all cost sharing in Medicare and enrolling people older than 55 and younger than 18. In the second year of its implementation, Sanders’s bill would again lower the Medicare eligibility age from 55 to 45. In the third year, the age would again fall from 45 to 35. By the fourth year, every American would be in the single-payer system.

As Democrats prepared to debate in Atlanta, the landscape for online political advertising shifted under their feet.

Google on Wednesday unveiled new rules for political advertisers, as major tech companies fight to fend off criticism that they have done too little to guard against the spread of misinformation and other incendiary messaging.

Under the new rules, political advertisers can target their ads on Google’s search engine and Google-owned YouTube only down to the level of postal codes. They can still target based on age and gender but will no longer be able to segment their audiences based on political affiliation or other information gleaned from public voter records.

The announcement came almost a week after Twitter announced guidelines for its ban on political advertising. It was sure to increase pressure on Facebook, which has received the lion’s share of criticism, including from Democratic presidential candidates.

Digital strategists said the move by Google was sure to have far-reaching impacts, transforming how candidates are able to seek out voters on the Web.

“This is a bad day for campaigns trying to reach voters online, especially given that Google represents half of a duopoly in the online advertising market,” said Eric Wilson, a Republican digital strategist, referring to the joint dominance of Google and Facebook.

Ady Barkan, an influential liberal activist who has ALS, endorsed Warren for president Wednesday, giving her a boost in the sometimes contentious debate over health care and Medicare-for-all.“She has the brains and the brawn and the moral clarity to overcome the challenges that we face,” Barkan said in a video. “I’ve seen up close how she confronts a problem. She listens to the people most affected, she does her homework and then she comes up with a plan. A brilliant, workable plan.”

Sanders’s campaign has received 4 million individual donations from people across the country, reaching the milestone months earlier than he did during his 2016 campaign, his campaign said. About one-quarter of donations that have so far flowed to the Sanders campaign came from online supporters signed up to automatically give money monthly, officials said. More than 175,000 people have signed up to donate a set amount each month, similar to a monthly subscription service.

The sixth debate will be held Dec. 19 in Los Angeles and is being co-hosted by PBS and Politico.

To qualify for this debate, candidates must get at least 200,000 unique donors and hit at least 4 percent in at least four qualifying polls or 6 percent in two single-state polls in the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina or Nevada.