Sanders Weathers Attacks From All At Chaotic Debate

The New York Times reports:

The Democratic presidential candidates delivered a barrage of criticism against their party’s emerging front-runner, Senator Bernie Sanders, at a debate on Tuesday night, casting him as a divisive figure with unrealistic ideas, even as they continued to batter Michael R. Bloomberg.

Mr. Sanders, in his first debate since a smashing victory in the Nevada caucuses last weekend, cut a combative but perhaps not a commanding figure, firmly defending his left-wing agenda on subjects like health care and foreign policy against attacks from all sides.

The forum plunged repeatedly into an unsightly spectacle of flailing hands and raised voices, and even outright chaos, with candidates talking over one another and the moderators struggling and failing at times to direct an orderly argument.

Politico reports:

Bernie Sanders’ momentum coming out of New Hampshire and Nevada made him a target from the moment Tuesday’s Democratic presidential debate kicked off in South Carolina, with every other candidate on the stage aiming barbs his way.

Sanders had to defend his record on guns, his words about authoritarian countries around the world, and how he would pay for his plans, while Pete Buttigieg, Amy Klobuchar, Mike Bloomberg and others — even including Warren, his longtime ideological ally — tried to knock the frontrunner down a peg.

But Sanders was also able to lean on well-worn campaign slogans and even faded into the background for large portions of an ill-tempered debate marred by cross-talk and marked by a number of other conflicts, including Joe Biden and Tom Steyer trading accusatory shouts over their records and promises to the African American community.

The New York Post reports:

Mike Bloomberg had a different plan for his second debate: buy it. A 60-second ad for the billionaire media mogul’s campaign played during the first and second commercial breaks of the CBS Democratic presidential debate on Wednesday night — drawing the ire of pundits on Twitter.

Viewers lashed into CBS for allowing Bloomberg to buy advertising slots during the first two debate commercial breaks, calling it “incompetence at best, corruption at worst.” “What kind of rule allows the candidates to advertise *during* the debate? Or did Bloomberg just buy CBS?” asked New Yorker writer Tad Friend.