Ten Democrat presidential candidates gathered on stage last night in Detroit — a Democrat-run city right up there with Baltimore — for the first of two debates in Round Two of the Left’s 2020 “Free” Stuff Sweepstakes. As both John Stossel (here and here) and The Washington Free Beacon report, the candidates seem only to be competing with each other for who can give away the most “free” stuff. Multitrillion-dollar proposals are all the rage as they cynically appeal for votes.

On that note, a significant argument last night was just how much “free” health care Democrats can promise without, as John Delaney warned, committing “political suicide” by being “the party of subtraction, and telling half the country … that their [private] health insurance is illegal.” While “moderates” like Delaney are making their last stand against “impossible promises” about “free everything,” socialists Bernie Sanders and his left-hand woman Elizabeth Warren argue that their $40 trillion government plan to take away your private health plan is the best way to go.

Warren flat-out lied: “We are the Democrats. We are not about trying to take away health care from anyone. That’s what the Republicans are trying to do.” That’s a BIG Lie — a false assertion so brazen they’re hoping voters won’t question it. They hope to dishonestly frame the debate as one between benevolent and caring Democrats and “bigoted” Republicans who “take stuff from you.”

John Hickenlooper says Sanders’s policies are too extreme and that “you might as well FedEx the election to Donald Trump.” But leftists like Hickenlooper are losing to the radical Left.

On a more humorous note, it’s ironic to hear Democrats like Sanders declare, “Nobody can defend the dysfunctionality of the current [health] system!” That would be the health system now defined by ObamaCare, rammed through by Democrats without a single Republican vote.

Immigration provided an interesting contrast. Whereas Warren called for citizenship for “students who have overstayed their visas” among others, Sanders insisted that “strong border protections” are necessary to prevent illegals from abusing all the “free” stuff. Now, we don’t believe for a minute that Sanders would actually secure the borders as president. But maybe he’s reading the tea leaves. Polling shows that many Americans view immigration as a top issue, and they specifically worry about illegals overwhelming and abusing income-redistribution programs.

Naturally, the subject of race came up. CNN’s Don Lemon, who has defended antifa thugs and compared President Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler, asked utterly preposterous questions: “What do you say to those Trump voters who prioritize the economy over the president’s bigotry?” And “President Trump is pursuing a reelection strategy based, in part, on racial division. How do you convince primary voters that you’d be the best nominee to take on President Trump and heal the racial divide in America?”

The entire history of the Democrat Party is one of racial division, which some now propose to “heal” by confiscating money from whites for reparations. The Democrats’ 2020 strategy comes from the same old playbook: Paint Trump as a racist (with the help of Leftmedia race-baiters like Lemon), and demand that all “people of color” (which simply means everyone but white people) fall in line with leftist groupthink.

We’ve only just touched on some of the biggest issues debated last night. But here’s some final food for thought: It is the leftist Sanders-Warren-Harris cabal, pitted against the more moderate choice of Joe Biden, that will be the Achilles heel for Democrats. Biden is a terrible candidate, but where else do moderate Demos go?

Footnote: Also on stage last night were Pete Buttigieg, Beto O'Rourke, Amy Klobuchar, Tim Ryan, Steve Bullock, and New Age guru Marianne Williamson.