The first 20 minutes of Thursday's Democratic debate in Houston "was arguing about heath care, and health care is very important," New York Times opinion writer Jamelle Bouie told Trevor Noah on Thursday's Daily Show, but that is an old debate and there's a lot of rehashing old fights "and I think what a lot of Democratic voters just want to know is how capable are you going to be on a debate stage with Trump, how able are you going to be to beat Trump? ... I'm not sure the Democratic voters are all that invested in these policy conversations."
Noah asked if the debates should be style over substance, and Bouie said it's a combination of the two. "The crazy thing is, Democratic voters really want to beat Trump, and they have firm ideas about what being electable means, but the fact that Trump is president means that literally anyone's electable," he said. "I think part of the trouble for Democratic voters is that there's no clear-cut way to actually determine who is going to be the best up against Trump, who is the most electable?"
"Does Trump have an advantage because he will just blatantly lie on a debate stage?" Noah asked. "Does that give him an advantage in a debate?" Bouie agreed: "I think it does."
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On Jimmy Kimmel Live, actor Sean Penn said he thought the debate was good because the 10 Democrats focused more on policy and less on Trump. "I think we're in a country where if he doesn't make the argument well enough against him, then we've lost anyway," Penn said. "They don't need to address him." Watch below. Peter Weber
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