I watched the Democratic debates on mute. This is what I saw.

I watched the Democratic debates in Detroit with the sound completely off. That’s six hours of television on mute, which I really wouldn’t recommend to anyone, but I wanted to see what impressions I got from experiencing a debate with my eyes alone.

For one thing, you get to know the candidates’ hand motions well. Joe Biden likes to do a double-handed chop, while Kamala Harris often made her points while holding a pen. Elizabeth Warren seemed to visually reinforce her brand as the candidate with a plan by counting on her fingers. 

Bernie Sanders used full open-handed jabs when he got passionate, which was most of the time. His body language was shouting.

No moments were as jarring as when the camera jumped from the bouncing, hyperactive Beto O’Rourke to the still, stoic Pete Buttigieg, whose hand motions usually didn’t get high enough to be seen above the cable news chyron.

It turns out that even with the sound off, some candidates were louder than others.

Context came in the form of the occasional question shown on screen and easy-to-lipread phrases like “broken system” or “American dream.” Opening and closing statements definitely looked more scripted than most everything else and were easy to follow.

I missed all the zingers but I noticed the reactions during confrontational moments. One of the most expressive moments came when Sanders and John Hickenlooper each threw up their hands at each other following a question about whether Sanders was too extreme to beat President Trump. Seemed like a touchy subject. Harris looked like she dominated Biden, turning and gesturing towards him throughout the debate.

Night one was the progressives vs. the moderates and night two was Biden vs. Harris and the world. It was easy to spot some of the major narratives of the debate without hearing anything because they tend to revolve around confrontation.

It was also interesting to see how confidence appeared to line up with polling. The top-tier candidates seemed more at ease on stage while some of the bottom-tier looked overeager when answering questions.