Tonight’s Democratic primary debate: the biggest winners and losers

| 11:07 pm EST February 19, 2020
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Tonight’s Democratic 2020 primary debate saw the fewest number of candidates on stage to date – just six – yet it resulted in the biggest fireworks. So who was on fire? Who got burned? Who was left wishing they hadn’t been there? Let’s take a take a look at the multiple winners and multiple losers tonight:

Winner: Elizabeth Warren. She came out swinging hard at Mike Bloomberg right from the start, and ended up largely owning him. She defended Klobuchar at a time when it was the right thing to do. Warren is a routinely strong debater. This may not have been her best debate performance to date, but it was her most important performance. She may have just put herself back in contention.

Loser: Mike Bloomberg. Wow did he ever come off poorly. He gave unsatisfactory answers to questions he should have known he would get, about topics like his tax returns and his nondisclosure agreements with an unknown number of women. He’s going to face some really tough media coverage this week as a result of his inability to satisfy anyone with the answers he gave tonight.

Sideways: Bernie Sanders. Considering he’s refusing to release his medical records, and his national press secretary just went on CNN and falsely claimed that Bloomberg had a heart attack, Bernie got off easy tonight. There was a ton for the other candidates to throw at Bernie tonight, and they only used about half of it. Bernie probably got off easy, considering how poorly Bloomberg performed. But after tonight, how many Bloomberg bandwagoners are going to revert back to other candidates like Biden and Buttigieg?

Sideways: Pete Buttigieg. This was a surprise. Buttigieg just won Iowa, and nearly won New Hampshire. He’s in first place in the delegate count right now. Yet he spent much of the debate arguing with Amy Klobuchar instead of focusing on Bloomberg and Bernie. Pete needed a strong performance tonight heading into more diverse states where his footing is less certain. It somehow didn’t happen.

Sideways: Amy Klobuchar. She largely got the best of her feuding with Buttigieg, but again, it was a wasted opportunity. As usual, she had some strong moments and put in a solid performance. But this wasn’t quite what she needed.

Sideways: Joe Biden. At times it felt like Biden wasn’t even there, as the moderators seemed to write off his candidacy. When Biden did get to speak, he correctly reminded everyone that he played a major role in the Obama administration accomplishments that the other candidates keep trying to take credit for. But it was almost like Biden wasn’t there. The best news for him is that if people bail on Bloomberg after tonight, they could revert back to Biden in sizable numbers.