Why Trump won the Democratic debate as Mike Bloomberg gets roughed up

Analysis: President salivates at running against a 'socialist', and Democrats seem eager to hand him just that in Bernie Sanders

As the Democratic candidates for president pounded each other in a political battle royale in Las Vegas, there was one clear winner: Donald Trump.

"We have not been talking enough about Donald Trump," Senator Amy Klobuchar, the Minnesota moderate, said at one point during the ninth and most combative Democratic debate. A few hundreds of miles away in Phoenix, the president was talking plenty about them.

"We're winning. We're winning like never before. Washington Democrats keep on losing their minds. They hate the fact that we're winning," Mr Trump said to another basketball arena-sized crowd of supporters. "We're winning big. We're winning, winning, winning."

His approval rating certainly suggests he is - despite the chaotic presidency, scandals, high-level ousters and firings, and even being impeached - the president is indeed winning his re-election bout.

Though it's still early in the 2020 cycle, poll numbers suggest, to borrow a version of a phrase coined by former First Lady Michelle Obama, when Democrats go low - on one another - Mr Trump's poll numbers go high, meaning higher.

Gallup, RealClearPolitics and others this week released polling data that put Mr Trump's approval rating near 50 percent - all the figures were either all-time highs for his term or post-impeachment highs.

But instead of trying to slow the president's rise, Democratic candidates were busy jockeying for position by bludgeoning each other with attack lines as the bickered and snapped their way through a raucous debate.

One major reason Mr Trump appears to have won the night were the countless blows former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg took from his fellow Democrats, as well as his own shaky performance. He appeared unprepared much of the evening, rolling his eyes more often than landing rhetorical blows on his foes.

Coming into the night, Mr Bloomberg was clearly on Mr Trump's mind as the former Big Apple mayor surged in the polls ahead of his debate debut. He mocked him at a water policy event in California earlier in the day as "Mini Mike," a dig at Mr Bloomberg's height.

Like other Democratic candidates, the former Big Apple mayor leads the incumbent in hypothetical head-to-head general election polls - by some margins larger than a poll's margin of error. The president interrupted the event in Bakersfield to tell the crowd that "Mini Mike" harbors "disrespect of the farmer." He was referring to comments his fellow New Yorker made in 2016 about the changing economy that prompted Mr Bloomberg's campaign to fire back, charging the president's policies have hurt farmers financially.

But, to be sure, Mr Bloomberg left Sin City in worse shape politically than when he walked onto the debate stage as the most serious challenger to Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont "democratic socialist" who now is the national frontrunner for the party's nomination.

"Democrats take a huge risk if we just substitute one arrogant billionaire for another," said Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Massachusetts progressive who came out swinging at just about everyone on the stage -- but especially the billionaire former mayor.

"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," Ms Warren said in one of the debate's sharpest lines.

"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," she said before claiming she will "support whoever the Democratic nominee is."

But her assessment of Mr Bloomberg, should he capture the nomination, surely caught the Trump campaign's attention. Any campaigning she would do on his behalf, given her harsh critique likely would seem manufactured to voters.

In fact, the president offered a preview of a likely attack line around the time she uttered that line.

"You know, I came up with the name 'Pocahontas' too early," Mr Trump said, referring to his mocking nickname for Ms Warren, referring to her false statements about a Native American ancestry. "Did you ever see a phony like that? She's a phony."

As the Democratic candidates softened up Mr Bloomberg and sharply criticised one another, Mr Sanders emerged largely unscathed. That means the Democratic Party is on track -- with a long way to go, mind you -- to nominate a self-described socialist just as Mr Trump and his campaign are salivating to run against a far-left Democrat they can paint as a socialist who wants to take money out of Americans' pockets and give it to individuals who seem foreign to them: lower-earning minorities and, according to the president, illegal immigrants.

Democrats intend "to raise your taxes, open your borders, give away free healthcare to illegal immigrants, and ... obliterate your Second Amendment," Mr Trump roared to loud boos.

"Washington Democrats had never been more extreme, taking cues from Crazy Bernie Sanders. How's he doing tonight? One hundred, thirty-two congressional Democrats have signed up for Bernie's health care takeover of the world," Mr Trump warned his supporters. "Think of this: 180 million Americans are going to lose health care coverage under this plan."

Yet, across the desert, Mr Sanders was casting his agenda as the best suited to convince voters to vote Democratic in November and oust Mr Trump. His proposed agenda is one that economic experts, including Democratic economists say would require a dramatic overhaul of the American economy, one that has low unemployment and on which Mr Trump is basing his reelection campaign's message.

"In order to beat Donald Trump, we're going to need the largest voter turnout in the history of the United States. Mr. Bloomberg had policies in New York City of stop-and-frisk which went after African-American and Latino people in an outrageous way. That is not a way you're going to grow voter turnout," Mr Sanders said, going right after Mr Bloomberg, who is trying to cast himself as the lone Democrat who can go right at the brash president and defeat him.

"What our movement is about is bringing working-class people together, black and white and Latino, Native American, Asian American, around an agenda that works for all of us and not just the billionaire class," he said. "And that agenda says that maybe, just maybe, we should join the rest of the industrialized world, guarantee health care to all people as a human right, raise that minimum wage to a living wage of $15 bucks an hour, and have the guts to take on the fossil fuel industry, because their short-term profits are not more important than the future of this planet and the need to combat climate change."

Meantime, in Phoenix: "While the extreme left has been wasting America's time with the hoaxes," the president said of investigations into his administration and 2016 campaing, "We've been killing terrorists, creating jobs, raising wages, enacting fair trade deals, securing our border and lifting up citizens of every race, color, religion and creed."

With Mr Sanders now the Democrat most likely to face the president, there are few signs the party is ready to unite. Mr Bloomberg, who has tried to wrestle the moderate mantle from others in the field, planted a big seed of doubt about whether the "democratic socialist" can get the job done in November.

"I don't think there's any chance of the senator beating President Trump. You don't start out by saying I've got 160 million people I'm going to take away the insurance plan that they love," Mr Bloomberg said dismissively. "That's just not a way that you go and start building the coalition that the Sanders camp thinks that they can do. I don't think there's any chance whatsoever."

Neither does Mr Trump. And that's why he's eager to, as they say, "feel the Bern," in the general election.