Breakout moment??

Democrats brawl in bid for breakout moment

By MARC CAPUTO and NOLAN D. MCCASKILL

Elizabeth Warren had her moments to shine. Beto O’Rourke spoke Spanish out of nowhere and then sparred with Julián Castro. Amy Klobuchar got one of the biggest applause lines of the night.

The 10-candidate Democratic presidential debate Wednesday night was a mix of policy, politics and posturing in the party’s most crowded primary in modern times.

Heading into the debate, the lineup had the look of Elizabeth Warren and the nine dwarfs when it was announced: The Massachusetts senator, surging in the polls, against a collection of cellar-dwellers desperate to gain traction.

But several of the low-polling contenders seemed to enhance their stature — Castro and Booker both stood out — by taking the fight to their rivals or delivering strong responses, as millions of Americans tuned into the race for the first time.

Here’s a look at the key moments of the two-hour debate on NBC and MSNBC:

Warren calls the Trump economy ‘corruption pure and simple’

Warren kicked off the debate when moderator Savannah Guthrie asked her whether her plans to restructure the economy represent a risk to Americans who think the economy is doing well.

“I think of it this way. Who is this economy really working for? It’s doing great for a thinner and thinner slice at the top,” Warren said, citing drug companies, private prison investors, and major oil companies as an example. “It’s just not doing great for people who are trying to get a prescription filled.”

“When you’ve got a government, when you’ve got an economy that does great for those with money and isn’t doing great with everyone else, that is corruption pure and simple,” she added. “We need to call it out. We need to attack it head on, and we need to make structural change in our government, in our economy and in our country.”

Beto goes Spanish 

O’Rourke was asked a simple question — whether he would advocate a 70 percent tax rate. He started to answer, then pivoted to a long monologue in Spanish. Every time it seemed like he was finished, he kept going. The response got a big reaction on Twitter.

"We need to include everyone in this economy,” Rourke said, before diving into Spanish. O'Rourke then came back and translated in English.

Booker, not to be outdone, later answered a question in Spanish, too — this one on immigration. He said immigrants shouldn't be demonized.

Klobuchar's zingers 

During a discussion on abortion, all the Democratic presidential candidates tended to agree on giving women the right to choose the procedure. But Washington Gov. Jay Inslee gave Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar a moment to shine when he boasted about his record.

“I am the only candidate here who has passed a law protecting a woman's reproductive rights in health insurance and the only candidate who passed a public option,” Inslee said. “I respect everyone's goals and plans here, but we do have one candidate who has advanced the ball.”

Klobuchar couldn’t keep quiet.

“I am fascinated by this,” she said, cutting in.

“I just want to say there are three women up here who fought very hard for a woman's right to choose,” Klobuchar said.

The loudest applause of the night rippled through the hall and briefly drowned her out.

Klobuchar delivered another zinger minutes later, criticizing President Donald Trump for failing to follow through on his claim to negotiate a better deal with Tehran.

“This president is literally every single day 10 minutes away from going to war, one tweet away from going to war," she said, "and I don’t think we should conduct foreign policy in our bathrobe at 5 in the morning.”

A Texas rivalry breaks out 

A home-state clash between O’Rourke and Castro broke out over immigration.

O’Rourke called for less restrictive immigration laws and invoked the recent drowning deaths of a migrant father and his daughter at the Rio Grande that have become a flashpoint in the debate over the nation’s immigration laws.

“We would not turn back Valeria and her father, Oscar. We would accept them into this country and follow our own asylum laws. We would not build walls. We would not put kids in cages,” O’Rourke said. “We would not build walls and put kids in cages.”

Castro interrupted: “Your policies would still criminalize a lot of these families.”

Moderator Jose Diaz-Balart tried to stop Castro: “Secretary, let him finish.”

“We would not detain any family fleeing violence, in fact fleeing the deadliest countries on the face of the planet today,” O’Rourke said as he explained having a new policy that would help Central America’s economy and prevent mass migrations.

Castro then stopped him and invoked a provision of the law, known as 1325, that the Trump administration uses to “criminalize coming across the border to incarcerate the parents and then separate them. Some of us have called to end that section to terminate it, some like Congressman O'Rourke, have not. And I want to challenge all of the candidates to do that. I just think it's a mistake, Beto I think that it’s a mistake. And if you truly want to change the system, we’ve got to repeal that section.”

O’Rourke said he wanted a bigger solution. The two argued back and forth, as Castro said the problem with O’Rourke’s current position is that it still criminalizes the undocumented too much and accused O’Rourke of not doing his “homework.”

Hot mic! 

At its heart, Wednesday’s Democratic presidential debate was still a TV show. And nothing ruins live TV like a hot mic. That happened when moderator Chuck Todd started asking about guns and whether the federal government has a role “to play in order to get these guns off the streets?”

That’s when mysterious cross-talk started coming through the speakers as Todd stumbled and candidates like Amy Klobuchar began to laugh.

“What's happening?” someone asked.

“We are hearing our colleague's audio,” Todd said. “If the control room can turn off the mics ... if the control room can turn off the mics of our previous moderators.”

Said Rachel Maddow, his co-moderator: “We prepared for everything ... we did not prepare for this.”

Todd cut to commercial: “We are going to take a quick break and we are going to get this technical situation fixed. We'll be right back.”