The biggest question in this first debate was how the candidates would handle the "problem" of running against a good economy.
Most, including Elizabeth Warren, Beto O'Rourke and Cory Booker, decided, essentially, to tell voters they are wrong.
When asked about the fact that 70% of Americans believe the economy is working, many candidates said it isn't. Making discrete points that the economy is working better for certain people, or that the metrics we use to measure a good economy -- GDP and the stock market, for example -- are incomplete isn't wrong or insignificant, but they don't account for how most people feel.
You can't overstate the deleterious impact Thomas Frank's "What's the Matter With Kansas" had on the Democratic party, cementing it as one that can appear condescending to average voters. Granted, there are limited strategies available to candidates to combat facts like record low unemployment, but telling voters that they know better than them is the worst -- and one that just doubles down on Frank's troubling 2004 question.
SE Cupp is a CNN political commentator and the host of "SE Cupp Unfiltered." Follow her on Twitter @secupp