Biden dominates battle for speaking time, ahead of Harris

Former Vice President Joe Biden spoke for more than 20 minutes of the 2 1/2-hour Democratic presidential primary debate on Wednesday as he parried attacks from virtually every other candidate on stage.

Biden, who struggled under the pressure of unexpected attacks during last month’s debate, responded to the moderators or to his fellow candidates more than 30 times, far more than any other candidate on stage.

In just the first few minutes of the debate, he and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) clashed repeatedly over their respective health care plans.{mosads}

Harris spoke for more than 15 minutes on Wednesday, second only to Biden. She, too, faced attacks from rivals including Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-Hawaii) and Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) — and Harris had more than 20 chances to respond to questions or attacks.

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who spoke for more time than any other candidate during the first debate, ended his second time on the debate stage speaking for just about 13 minutes.

Five other candidates — Gabbard, Bennet, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julián Castro — spoke for roughly 10 to 11 minutes, according to The Hill’s stopwatch.

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) and tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang were the only two candidates who spoke for less than 10 minutes.

Over the course of two nights of debates between 20 Democratic candidates, Biden’s nearly 21 minutes of talk time represented the most that any candidate had to present their case — almost three minutes longer than the most verbose candidate of Tuesday’s debate, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), and almost four minutes longer than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

But unlike Harris, Warren and Sanders, Biden seemed to leave a significant amount of time on the table, deferring to moderators at their first attempts to cut him off, while the others barreled through their admonishments to wrap up.

Biden, who still leads in virtually every poll of national and early state Democratic voters, has had more microphone time than any other candidate over the first two sets of debates, at nearly 34 minutes. Harris has spoken for almost 29 minutes, while Sanders and Warren spoke for between 27 and 28 minutes each.

Some of the candidates who have yet to qualify for the next debate, in September, have spoken for only a fraction of the time of the front-runners.

Montana Gov. Steve Bullock (D), who missed out on the first debates, got only 10 minutes and 41 seconds to address voters on Tuesday; Yang spoke for just 11 minutes and 40 seconds over the course of two debates. And Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper (D) and best-selling author Marianne Williamson both spoke for about 13 1/2 minutes in their first two opportunities on stage.