Now that was a debate. And, contrary to what we read on many other pundit pages the morning after, we think Wednesday night's televised Democratic debate in Las Vegas was good one. In fact, it was one that we think might have finally begun to help shape some primary voter decisions - especially in the wake of the disruptive confusion that Michael Bloomberg's late entry brought to the primary season.
While some pundits decried Democrats for eating their young, we viewed it through the lens of who would be able to stand on a stage and face down the arrogant, insulting and bullying Donald Trump - without looking weak.
Kumbaya won't work on a stage with Trump, so don't show it to us now. Instead, show us your fire, your passion, your bite.
And that's what we saw Wednesday.
At least we saw it from everyone but Bloomberg.
(MORE: Debate night brawl: Bloomberg, Sanders attacked by rivals)
What we saw from Bloomberg was a man who didn't know how to respond, who didn't know how to fight back. More to point, we saw a man who - like Trump - doesn't seem to understand that he will not simply be crowned because he says he should be. (That's also the message of a Bloomberg campaign memo that we'll discuss later.)
"Let me finish," Bloomberg said several times onstage Wednesday as the debate intensified. And when he couldn't get attention from the moderators, he added: "What am I, chicken liver?"
He had one semi-good line. In answering a question about redlining and the financial crisis, he said "[M]aybe we want to talk about businesses. I'm the only one here ... I think that's ever started a business. Is that fair?" He waited for the others on the stage to answer. When the only sound was crickets, he said, "OK."
But then he failed to capitalize.
Meanwhile, Elizabeth Warren found her fire again, and she put Bloomberg on the hot seat in her opening statement - the third comment in the evening's debate: "So 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. Democrats are not going to win if we have a nominee who has a history of hiding his tax returns, of harassing women, and of supporting racist polls like redlining and stop and frisk. Look, I'll support whoever the Democratic nominee is. But understand this: Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another."
The crowd in the debate hall went wild with applause - the first of the night. And Warren did capitalize: "This country has worked for the rich for a long time and left everyone else in the dirt. It is time to have a president who will be on the side of working families and be willing to get out there and fight for them. That is why I am in this race, and that is how I will beat Donald Trump."
More applause.
Amy Klobuchar, Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg piled on, with Klobuchar and Buttigieg pausing only long enough to snipe at each other along the way.
(MORE: Takeaways from the Democratic debate)
Bloomberg, by turns, seemed petulant and cornered, (just as he did with reporters in Chattanooga recently) especially when he wouldn't respond when asked if he'd release former employees from the non-disclosure forms he'd made them sign in settlement agreements. But his demeanor wasn't the main thing that, by our view, eliminated him Wednesday.
Rather, what doused him with gasoline and lit a match was the public release of a "state of the race" memo from his campaign. The memo's conclusion read, in part: "[I]f Biden, Buttigieg, and Klobuchar remain in the race despite having no path to appreciably collecting delegates on Super Tuesday (and beyond), they will propel Sanders to a seemingly insurmountable delegate lead by siphoning votes away from MRB [Bloomberg] "
Klobuchar characterized it as saying "the three of us should get out of the way we should 'pave the way' for him to become the nominee."
The ever-calm Buttigieg made his attack a two-for-one: "We could wake the day after Super Tuesday, and the only candidates left standing will be Bernie Sanders and Mike Bloomberg, the two most polarizing figures on this stage. And most Americans don't see where they fit if they've got to choose between a socialist who thinks that capitalism is the root of all evil and a billionaire who thinks that money ought to be the root of all power."
Bloomberg, for his part, had his tone-deaf button dialed up high, casting Sanders, without calling his name, as a communist, who would ensure Trump's re-election. The audience booed.
Yet, here is Bloomberg, who with nearly half a billion dollars worth of advertising, bought his way into the race and now - himself - is siphoning the votes away from all of the moderate Democrats who might wrest away the nomination from Sanders.
That's especially true of Joe Biden, from whom Bloomberg is mooching the support of both older moderate voters and black voters. Did we mention that in head-to-head general election matchup polls, Biden leads Trump nationally by 8 points, 52% to 44%? All five major Democratic candidates (also Bloomberg, Sanders, Buttigieg and Klobuchar) lead Trump in those match-ups, but only Biden's lead is above of the NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll's margin of error.
Bloomberg did win on one count Wednesday. He nudged Sanders out of our least-favorite Democratic candidate spot. And if that eventually makes Sanders our favorite November candidate, we'll still be far better off than if it were Bloomberg.