Bernie Sanders came into Wednesday's debate as the front runner with two primary wins under his belt and a commanding double-digit lead. He also arrived facing seemingly insurmountable odds. Not one but two moderators - Chuck Todd and Jon Ralston - have faced serious accusations of bias against Sanders. And with all of his rivals ganging up over the past week in cynical attacks on Sanders' base of supporters, it was clear that Sanders would be walking into Las Vegas with a target on his back.
But despite a night of raucous arguments - along with exceptional performances by Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren - it was hard to not to notice that at the end of the night, Sanders was still on top.
"I thought the big winner tonight was Bernie Sanders," famed Bernie Bro Terry McAuliffe told a post-debate panel on CNN. "Bernie Sanders was the front runner going into this, and nobody touched him tonight. And if you're a front runner going into a debate, and it's all over [there], and no one's touching you...it was a big night, I think, for Bernie Sanders."
Sanders' rivals certainly took their best shots. In one extended exchange that only the terminally online could possibly understand or care about, the candidates relitigated drama over Sanders' supporters. The night also featured a genuinely historic clash between the billionaire Bloomberg, who defiantly defended his vast fortune, and our nation's only socialist Senator, who leveled a plainspoken but familiar critique of capitalism. That Sanders made it through both fights without a scratch is a testament to both his convictions and his rhetorical deftness as a politician.
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Like Sanders, Elizabeth Warren also took the stage facing an uphill battle. And like Sanders, Warren also delivered an effective performance. But set aside the wishful thinking of diehards and drama-seeking pundits, and it seems clear that the clock on Warren's campaign is running out.
For the past several weeks, Warren's camp has argued that she is being "erased" by the media. Given her current standing in the primary - third place in one state, fourth in another, and approaching fifth in national polling - it has seemed more likely to me that Warren's people have simply been working the refs. Journalists are prone to overcompensation when professional acquaintances are constantly yelling "bias" in their ear, and since Warren has been sinking in the polls, the natural strategy is for her to try to engineer some kind of comeback narrative fueled by guilt-tripped pundits.
Like Sanders, Warren also teed off on Michael Bloomberg on Wednesday. To her credit, Warren brutally humiliated Bloomberg over sexual harassment allegations - and clearly rattled him with well-timed interruptions as he stammered out his response. But while this was satisfying to watch, it did little to advance Warren's case over the other candidates; Bloomberg, as rhetorically inept as he is loathsome, should be a fish in a barrel for any reasonably competent politician.
The debate has little chance of salvaging Warren's campaign. And in her final response, Warren implicitly acknowledged this: when Chuck Todd asked the candidates if whoever won the most votes should be the nominee, she gave an extended, lawyerly response that was about 30 words longer than "yes" or "no". Like everyone else, she is clearly preparing for Sanders to win a plurality of votes and contemplating a less democratic route to the nomination.
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It's hard not to see in Warren's answer some clear outlines of the primary moving forward. Sanders must try not just to win, but to win decisively, in a way that delegitimizes any attempt to steal his nomination at the convention. That means either a commanding plurality or an outright majority. His opponents, meanwhile, have made it clear that they don't think they need to win; if Sanders can't earn a majority, some combination of superdelegates or delegate pooling could give them cover to seize the nomination.
In other words, this is not your ordinary primary where candidates drop out as soon as earning a majority becomes mathematically improbable. As long as they have money and as long as they are winning a reasonable number of delegates, Bernie's opponents have every reason to stay in the race, hoping that some combination of luck and politicking wins them a seat at the bargaining table. This is also true of Warren, of course. Democrats who imagined that she would drop out if it became clear that Sanders would come in first have fooled themselves; if we take what she is saying seriously, we should conclude that she will try to take the nomination from Sanders if she can. Even if he places first.
This is the real story of Wednesday's debate. Look past the dramatic performances and the canned one-liners, and you'll see, in the closing moments, a hint of what Sanders supporters have long suspected. The Democratic establishment is prepared for a long war to stop him, and if that means overturning democracy at the convention - they're prepared to do that, too.