With a few hiccups, Hillary dominated. But it was like a top-tier candidate showing up at a under-card debate. Sixty percent of the candidates have no chance and the other major candidate, Bernie Sanders, is a complete flake. It emerged from the debate that his socialism isn’t a drawback, but what recommends him to Democrats in the absence of much else. He got hammered on guns–he haplessly tried to explain away his relatively moderate views on gun control by saying he comes from a rural state–and he had nothing compelling to say on foreign policy. He tried to bring national security as much as possible around to his passion–centralized control of the economy–by insisting that climate change is a dire security threat. He could be forceful, but also cranky and odd. In the most memorable moment of the night, he said Hillary’s emails should no longer be a topic of discussion, a gambit that makes sense when appealing to the party’s left and fits the anti-negative-campaigning Sanders brand. Coupled with Anderson Cooper’s ineffectual approach on this issue, it got Hillary off the hook (count it as her third recent stroke of good fortune on the emails, with the McCarthy gaffe and the disgruntled committee staffer the others). One of the questions Biden will have to consider is whether Hillary was truly formidable, or only seemed that way compared to very weak competition.