In Las Vegas, not surprisingly, it was all about the sizzle.
The ninth Democratic primary debate Wednesday night was the liveliest yet but did little to tell party voters how to differentiate the policies of so-called moderates former Vice President Joe Biden, Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar and former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg. It did not delineate how former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg, a newcomer to the stage, would govern differently from those who had been at the nominee game for more than a year. And it did not explain how paying for all the things Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, wants to do is any more financially feasible than paying for all the things promised by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Massachusetts.
Instead, it played out more like a night with the late Las Vegas headliner Don Rickles, whose insults of those in his audience were legend. Many of the insults Wednesday went to Bloomberg, who is financing his campaign and chose to skip the first four primary contests and first compete on Super Tuesday, March 3. But it was an equal opportunity insult show.
(MORE: Debate night brawl: Bloomberg, Sanders attacked by rivals)
* Warren: "I'd like to talk about who we're running against, a billionaire who calls women 'fat broads' and 'horse-faced lesbians.' And, no, I'm not talking about Donald Trump. I'm talking about Mayor Bloomberg."
The Massachusetts senator, without a path to the nomination and needing a boost in her campaign, came out firing by repeating some of the misogynistic lines the former New York City mayor is supposed to have uttered. Bloomberg never denied he made the statements or several other phrases that were turned back against him during the evening.
* Buttigieg: "We shouldn't have to choose between one candidate who wants to burn this party down (Sanders) and another candidate who wants to buy this party out (Bloomberg)."
The former South Bend mayor starkly presented what many in the party fear could play out - choosing between an avowed socialist (the good kind, Sanders assure us) who is almost assuredly a loser to Trump in the fall, and a man so rich he is financing his campaign with the kind of money his primary opponents traditionally rail against.
* Warren: "Amy's [health care] plan is even less. It's like a Post-It note, 'Insert Plan Here'."
The Massachusetts senator, dodging an answer about her own plan, was riffing on the proposals by Buttigieg and Klobuchar. Klobuchar, when her turn came, had a line ready. "I must say," she said, "I take personal offense since Post-It notes were invented in my state, so ..."
* Bloomberg: "What a wonderful country we have. The best known socialist in the country (Sanders) happens to be a millionaire with three houses."
Sanders, whose tax plans hit all those making at least $29,000, made his answer worse by naming his houses, including "a summer camp," not something those making under $30,000 can afford.
* Buttigieg: (To Klobuchar, referring to not being able to name the president of Mexico in a recent interview) "You're literally in part of the committee that's overseeing these things and were not able to speak to literally the first thing about the politics of the country to our south."
Klobuchar, having publicly acknowledged her error, turned the table on the former South Bend mayor, noting she had passed more than 100 bills and had won statewide races while he "lost by over 20 points to someone who later lost to my friend Joe Donnelly (a former one-term Indiana U.S. senator)."
* Klobuchar (later in the debate): "I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete."
Though she sounded like a fifth-grader in making the accusation, the Minnesota senator may have spoken for most of the candidates on stage in wanting to flick away the frequently holier-than-thou Buttigieg, whose only elected position has been mayor of the fourth largest city in Indiana.
* Warren: "[Bloomberg] has gotten some number of women - dozens, who knows? - to sign nondisclosure agreements both for sexual harassment and for gender discrimination in the workplace."
Bloomberg's retort was antiseptic, saying there were "very few nondisclosure agreements," that some "maybe didn't like a joke I told," but refusing to say how many existed and concluding that "they signed the agreements, and that's what we're going to live with." To be sure, the agreements will come up again.
* Bloomberg: "We're not going to throw out capitalism. We tried. Other countries tried that. It was called communism, and it didn't work."
(MORE: Takeaways from the Democratic debate)
The former mayor's little nugget of truth was aimed at Sanders, who has espoused some policies once adopted and later abandoned in Western European democratic socialist countries. The Vermont senator called it a "cheap shot" and said, as many of his supporters are doing in an effort to soften the word, that "we are living in many ways in a socialist society right now."
Though Warren easily had the best night, and Bloomberg the worst, Middle Americans learned little new that will convince them their lives have worsened in the last three years. Thus, Trump may have had as good a night as Warren.