I want to make a close study of a section of the transcript of last night's debate — the part about race that ended with Kamala Harris yelling at Biden.

I could not listen to the substance last night. With TV, I'm tuned into the images and emotion. I'm not going to be distracted by the substance, and I know I'll have the transcript later. (I got mine at WaPo.)

I feel that the emotional high point came when Kamala Harris was yelling at Joe Biden. Here's how Drudge depicts it:




It was the emotional high, so that means I was at my lowest substance absorbency. I need to parse the transcript to see exactly how that rolled out and how I think about it in the dark storm of morning.

It began right after the break, with the second set of moderators, Chuck Todd and Rachel Maddow. Maddow's first question, addressed to Pete Buttigieg, was very specific:

In the last five years, civil rights activists in our country have led a national debate over race and the criminal justice system. Your community of South Bend, Indiana, has recently been in uproar over an officer-involved shooting. The police force in South Bend is now 6 percent black in a city that is 26 percent black. Why has that not improved over your two terms as mayor?

Of course, Buttigieg had to have been completely prepared to answer this question, so let's see what he had:

Because I couldn't get it done. My community is in anguish right now because of an officer-involved shooting, a black man, Eric Logan, killed by a white officer. And I'm not allowed to take sides until the investigation comes back. The officer said he was attacked with a knife, but he didn't have his body camera on. It's a mess. And we're hurting.

And I could walk you through all of the things that we have done as a community, all of the steps that we took, from bias training to de-escalation, but it didn't save the life of Eric Logan. And when I look into his mother's eyes, I have to face the fact that nothing that I say will bring him back.

This is an issue that is facing our community and so many communities around the country. And until we move policing out from the shadow of systemic racism...

That's the key phrase: "the shadow of systemic racism."

... whatever this particular incident teaches us, we will be left with the bigger problem of the fact that there is a wall of mistrust put up one racist act at a time, not just from what's happened in the past, but from what's happening around the country in the present. It threatens the well-being of every community.

And I am determined to bring about a day when a white person driving a vehicle and a black person driving a vehicle, when they see a police officer approaching, feels the exact same thing... a feeling not of fear but of safety. I am determined to bring that day about.

How good was Buttigieg? It seems clear and articulate, but we're on our own understanding what "systemic racism" is and how it can ever be eradicated. All Buttigieg did with his answer is move from the specific — the shooting of Eric Logan — to the highly general — racism, it's everywhere, interwoven with everything. That's a way to make the specific disappear. Why pick on me about South Bend and Eric Logan, when it's just a manifestation of that general thing that is everywhere, all the time? And by the way, I have nothing to offer about what to do about it. I simply bemoan it and want it gone. 

He stops when Maddow stops him (saves him?). Times up. Hickenlooper starts interrupting. For reasons that I do not understand, Maddow gives Hickenlooper 30 seconds. (Perhaps there's a rule that they can ask to cut in and be given some time and that the total time will be kept track of and equalized, but the time was not equalized. Biden ended up with over 10 minutes and Yang with less than 3 minutes.)

Hickenlooper says:

I think that the question they're asking in South Bend and I think across the country is why has it taken so long? We had a shooting when I first became mayor, 10 years before Ferguson.

I had to look it up: Hickenlooper was mayor of Denver (from 2003 to 2011).

And the community came together and we created an Office of the Independent Monitor, a Civilian Oversight Commission, and we diversified the police force in two years. We actually did de-escalation training. I think the real question that America should be asking is why, five years after Ferguson, every city doesn't have this level of police accountability.

Now, that's specific. And Hickenlooper distinguishes himself as a mayor of a big city, with city experience and acquired wisdom. He was a mayor and a governor. He's got the executive background. Hickenlooper was ready to step on Pete, and he did it quite neatly (although I didn't pick that up last night because I was just so annoyed at the disorderly interruption and because I am vaguely repelled by Hickenlooper's teeth, which are not TV-ready).

Buttigieg claims a right to respond and isn't stopped as he defends himself:

Look, we have taken so many steps toward police accountability that, you know, the FOP just denounced me for too much accountability. We're obviously not there yet, and I accept responsibility for that because I'm in charge.

In real time "FOP" would sail over my head, but I know it means "Fraternal Order of Police." And if he's taken "so many steps," why didn't he talk about them when he got the question about why things have not improved in his 2 terms as mayor? Buttigieg still doesn't say what the "steps" were. He just refers to them.

Then Swalwell breaks in with a knockout punch: "If the camera wasn't on and that was the policy, you should fire the chief."

Buttigieg does not counter that direct hit. He just says: "So under Indiana law, this will be investigated and there will be accountability for the officer involved." Ugh! The telltale "So" at the beginning of an answer. It means, I'm not going to respond to what you're asking for but it reminds me of somewhere else I can go.

Swalwell repeats his point: "But you're the mayor. You should fire the chief -- if that's the policy and someone died."

Buttigieg does not get another chance at that, because Marianne Williamson — of all people — breaks in. She says:

All of these issues are extremely important, but they are specifics; they are symptoms. And the underlying cause has to do with deep, deep, deep realms of racial injustice, both in our criminal justice system and in our economic system. 

That's essentially repeating Buttigieg's idea of "the shadow of systemic racism." So general. But she's got a specific remedy:

And the Democratic Party should be on the side of reparations for slavery for this very reason. 

Whoa! She said "reparations." The word appears nowhere else in the transcript of last night's debate (or in the previous night's debate).

She continues:

I do not believe... (APPLAUSE) ... I do not believe that the average American is a racist, but the average American is woefully undereducated about the history of race in the United States.

Maddow thanks her, and there's a lot of cross talk, which Chuck Todd tries to manage, but then Kamala Harris's voice rises to the top:

As the only black person on this stage, I would like to speak... on the issue of race.

There is applause, and Maddow gives her the floor,  but only for "30 seconds, because we're going to come back to you on this again in just a moment." Harris seems to go much longer than 30 seconds (because she settles into rambling speechmaking):

Okay. So on the issue of race, I couldn't agree more that this is an issue that is still not being talked about truthfully and honestly. I -- there is not a black man I know, be he a relative, a friend or a co-worker, who has not been the subject of some form of profiling or discrimination. Growing up, my sister and I had to deal with the neighbor who told us her parents couldn't play with us because she -- because we were black. And I will say also that -- that, in this campaign, we have also heard -- and I'm going to now direct this at Vice President Biden, I do not believe you are a racist, and I agree with you when you commit yourself to the importance of finding common ground. But I also believe, and it's personal -- and I was actually very -- it was hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country. And it was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing.

So... she is not addressing the problem of police shootings. She meandered about as if wondering what to do or how to link things up to what she needed to do and attack Biden. And then she just went for it and shifted to the topic of long-ago school desegregation. After talking about herself as a little girl — above, "Growing up, my sister and I had to deal with the neighbor..." — she returns to the image of herself as a little girl:

And, you know, there was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bussed to school every day. And that little girl was me.

That's her credential: She herself experienced busing.

So I will tell you that, on this subject, it cannot be an intellectual debate among Democrats. We have to take it seriously. 

To be "intellectual" is not to "take it seriously"?

We have to act swiftly. 

About busing? Or is this a general approach — don't intellectualize, just do something, quick. I'm confused, but the next thing she says gets back to the police topic:

As attorney general of California, I was very proud to put in place a requirement that all my special agents would wear body cameras and keep those cameras on.

Maddow thanks her and turns to Biden. He has been "invoked," so he gets "a chance to respond." He says:

It's a mischaracterization of my position across the board. I did not praise racists. That is not true, number one. Number two, if we want to have this campaign litigated on who supports civil rights and whether I did or not, I'm happy to do that. I was a public defender. I didn't become a prosecutor. 

Ah! That's the attack he will be making. He's friendlier to black people because he was on the side of the defense (long ago, in his lawyer days), and she was the prosecution.

I came out and I left a good law firm to become a public defender, when, in fact -- when, in fact...(APPLAUSE) ... when, in fact, my city was in flames because of the assassination of Dr. King, number one. Number two...

I like this "number one, number two" locution. It says: I'll say this clear and fast.

... as the U.S. -- excuse me, as the vice president of the United States, I worked with a man who, in fact, we worked very hard to see to it we dealt with these issues in a major, major way. The fact is that, in terms of bussing, the bussing, I never -- you would have been able to go to school the same exact way because it was a local decision made by your city council. That's fine. That's one of the things I argued for, that we should not be -- we should be breaking down these lines.

Pro-federalism. That's good. That's an idea that's useful for moderation and consensus (and also, traditionally, to allow racially backward policies to linger).

But so the bottom line here is, look, everything I have done in my career, I ran because of civil rights, I continue to think we have to make fundamental changes in civil rights, and those civil rights, by the way, include not just only African Americans, but the LGBT community.

Fine. Quick. Not braggy. He sounds like a good man, a real person, with a long, long history, and Kamala Harris has to take another shot. She drills in, like a prosecutor:

But, Vice President Biden, do you agree today -- do you agree today that you were wrong to oppose bussing in America then? Do you agree?

He answers:

I did not oppose bussing in America. What I opposed is bussing ordered by the Department of Education. That's what I opposed. I did not oppose...

That might be too fussy for debate-watchers to like, but it is federalism, and I think a good portion of Americans believe in it. Don't we want local control of schools? Maybe not.

Harris says:

Well, there was a failure of states to integrate public schools in America. I was part of the second class to integrate Berkeley, California, public schools almost two decades after Brown v. Board of Education.

Biden aptly inserts: "Because your city council made that decision. It was a local decision."

As if she doesn't understand his point, she says: "So that's where the federal government must step in." I guess she means if the local decision goes the wrong way, the feds step in. Local government gets to function separately if it goes in the direction the elite sees as progressive, but if the locals have other ideas they must be corrected by the feds. This is the version of federalism that the left has long favored.

That's why we have the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. (APPLAUSE) That's why we need to pass the Equality Act. That's why we need to pass the ERA, because there are moments in history where states fail to preserve the civil rights of all people.

Biden lacks either the wit or the desire to defend a stronger version of federalism. He doesn't go off on state and local government as laboratories of democracy or anything about valuing decentralized decision-making. He just jumps at the ERA (which is an escape from the topic of race). He says:

I supported the ERA from the very beginning. I'm the guy that extended the Voting Rights Act for 25 years. We got to the place where we got 98 out of 98 votes in the United States Senate doing it. I've also argued very strongly that we, in fact, deal with the notion of denying people access to the ballot box. I agree that everybody, once they, in fact -- anyway, my time is up. I'm sorry.

I liked the way he suddenly stopped at the expiration of time. Everyone else was always trying to grab more time. I saw some people joking that the old politico said "my time is up," but I liked the crisp observation of the time limit (even if he did it because he was tired of defending himself or knew he was doing too much hopping from topic to topic and worried about seeming incoherent and geriatric).

Who got the better of this interchange? To me, it was clearly Biden. I didn't like Harris's attack on Biden when I was experiencing it emotionally, watching TV late at night, and I don't like it now, as I examine the transcript this morning. She yelled at him, and she would have won if he had broken down and just yelled at her or if he'd gotten confused and said something wrong. But he made sense, and though I could see on TV that he was aggravated by the attack, on the page, he's completely lucid. He gets his points in and the points are sound. That's all I need him to do. I am not won over by Harris's "That little girl was me" pathos or her prosecutorial aggression. But maybe a lot of people think she won the night. It didn't work on me. I woke up this morning with an okay, it's Biden feeling.