Opinion | Cheer Up, Democrats

Aware that it was his make-or-break moment to convince South Carolina — and Super Tuesday — voters that he still has the requisite fire in the belly, Joe Biden got pointed and personal. He noted that the debate was taking place not far from the site of the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel Church, then slammed Mr. Sanders for his past opposition to gun control, including five votes against the Brady Bill, which requires a waiting period and a background check for those looking to buy handguns. “I’m not saying he’s responsible for the nine deaths,” a fired-up Mr. Biden clarified, before making a somewhat opaque argument suggesting that Mr. Sanders’s pro-gun voting history was at least partly to blame.

Amy Klobuchar got overlooked in the opening melee — in some ways a perfect reflection of her broader candidacy, which, despite her consistently strong debate showings and a surprise third-place finish in New Hampshire, has struggled to gain traction.

As for Tom Steyer: Eh.

Thus the contours of the evening were set, which might have caused more trouble for Mr. Sanders if the other candidates had been able to resist stepping on one another’s arguments — and frequently firing on one another: Biden on Steyer. Klobuchar on Biden. Buttigieg on Bloomberg. And in a reprise of her Las Vegas tour de force, Warren on Bloomberg in a bloodletting worthy of Uma Thurman in “Kill Bill.”

The result of all this passion and urgency: No one candidate stood out, and Mr. Sanders suffered mostly superficial wounds. At the end of the two hours, many viewers were most likely exhausted — or reaching for their beta blockers — but it’s unlikely that many minds were changed about anyone.

If this had been a less crowded debate, it’s possible the discussion would have been cleaner and the efforts to articulate concerns about Mr. Sanders’s candidacy more cogent. Mr. Buttigieg, for instance, repeatedly argued that Mr. Sanders would not only lose the Democrats the White House but also cut their numbers in the Senate and cost them their hard-won House majority.

“The time has come for us to stop acting like the presidency is the only office that matters,” he cautioned. “Look, if you want to keep the House in Democratic hands, you might want to check with the people who actually turned the House blue — 40 Democrats who are not running on your platform. They are running away from your platform as fast as they possibly can.”

Of Mr. Sanders’s dodgy math on his Medicare for All proposal, Mr. Buttigieg didn’t argue the details, instead charging, “I’ll tell you exactly what it adds up to: It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House and the inability to get the Senate into Democratic hands.”