Article snippet: If the first debate meeting between former vice president Joe Biden and Senator Elizabeth Warren was supposed to be a dramatic, head-to-head showdown, it hardly materialized. But Warren could benefit from that anyway. Biden entered the presidential debate on Thursday night in Houston as the front-runner in the Democratic primary, with Warren rising in the polls to become one of his more fearsome rivals. In the opening moments, Biden took a shot at pumping up his Obama-era centrism at the expense of her lefty liberalism, seeking to contrast her support for Medicare for All — a plan devised by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders — with his own proposal to expand the Affordable Care Act with a public option. “The senator says she’s for Bernie, well I’m for Barack,” Biden said, before accusing Warren of failing to explain how she would pay for the massive expansion of government financing for health care. But Warren hardly took the bait. Rather than hitting back directly at Biden, she praised Obama and then launched into a spirited defense of Sanders’ plan. The answer set the tone for a night in which it was Warren, the ascendant Democrat, who sought to hover above the fray — although, at times, out of the spotlight — crisply defending her ideas while Biden tangled with his opponents . He frequently had to defend himself even as he sought to raise questions about whether the ideas of his liberal rivals are realistic. For Warren, the debate was a new test at the end of ... Link to the full article to read more