Amber Athey

Every Democrat lost in last night’s South Carolina debate

Former South Bend mayor Pete Buttigieg said at least one accurate thing in South Carolina on Tuesday night: ‘Russia doesn’t have a political party… they want chaos’. But Mayor Pete was dead wrong when he said the chaos would come from a presidential race between Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and President Donald Trump.

The chaos was right there on stage. The candidates went south in more than one way tonight.

CBS’s attempt at moderating the latest Democratic debate was a disastrous hellstorm of candidates yelling over one another, sharing bad jokes, lobbing tired and petty attacks, and, worst of all, trying to show some semblance of self-awareness with the final set of so-called ‘personal’ questions.

If you had a hard time keeping up, don’t feel bad — so did the moderators. Norah O’Donnell summed up the night’s mayhem and confusion when she accidentally went to end the debate before the final commercial break, only to be chided by her colleague, Gayle King, who apparently was more attentive to the corporate sponsors.

The candidates themselves seemed flustered by a crowd that they apparently could not win over

The candidates themselves seemed flustered by a crowd that they apparently could not win over — the audience, in fact, seemed suspiciously pro-Bloomberg considering he’s not even on the ballot in South Carolina. They booed repeatedly when candidates trotted out anti-Bloomberg lines about ‘billionaires’ and jeered Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren as she harped on Bloomberg again for allegedly saying mean and sexist things to women. Sharp-minded viewers later discovered that attendees had to pay at least £1,350 to get a guaranteed seat in the venue, which led to suspicions as to whether a wealthier crowd would just happen to skew more pro-Bloomberg or if some fishier financial arrangement was going on. Suspicions were hardly alleviated by the fact that Bloomberg was running campaign ads during the commercial breaks.

Speaking of Liz Warren, it was certainly a bold strategy to pivot from a relatively stellar performance in Nevada to the ‘Leeroy

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