Bloomberg, Sanders under attack at Democrats’ Nevada debate

From the opening bell, Democrats unleashed an aggressive verbal assault on New York billionaire Mike Bloomberg and raised new questions about Bernie Sanders’ take-no-prisoners politics in a contentious debate Wednesday night on the Las Vegas Strip.

The former New York City mayor was forced to defend his divisive record on race, gender and Wall Street in his debate-stage debut, while Sanders, appearing in his ninth of the 2020 primary season, tried to beat back pointed questions about his health and his ability to defeat President Donald Trump this fall.

It was a raucous affair just three days before Nevada voters decide the third contest of the Democratic Party’s turbulent 2020 primary season. Bloomberg won’t be on the ballot Saturday, yet he faced intense scrutiny on national television for the first time, having faced relatively little in his surprisingly swift rise from nonpartisan megadonor to top-tier contender.

In a fight for her political life, Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was a leading aggressor early against Bloomberg. She called him "a billionaire who calls people fat broads and horse-faced lesbians."

She wasn’t alone.

Sanders lashed out at Bloomberg’s policing policies as New York City mayor that he said targeted "African-American and Latinos in an outrageous way."

And former Vice President Joe Biden charged that Bloomberg’s "stop-and-frisk" policy ended up "throwing 5 million black men up against the wall."

Bloomberg defended himself on all counts and took a shot at Sanders’ electability: "I don’t think there’s any chance of the senator beating Donald Trump."

While Bloomberg was the shiny new object Wednesday, the debate also marked a major test for Sanders, a self-described democratic socialist who is emerging as the front-runner in the Democrats’ nomination fight, whether his party’s establishment likes it or not. A growing group of donors, elected officials and political operatives fear that Sanders’ uncompromising progressive politics could be a disaster in the general election against Trump, yet they’ve struggled to coalesce behind a single moderate alternative.

Las Vegas debate a major test of Bloomberg campaign’s gamble

Former Midwestern Mayor Pete Buttigieg attacked both Bloomberg and Sanders, warning that one threatened to "burn down" the Democratic Party and the other was trying to buy it.

He called them "the two most polarizing figures on this stage."

Bloomberg and Sanders may have been prime targets at the outset, but the stakes were no less dire for the other four candidates on stage.

Longtime establishment favorite Biden, Obama’s two-term vice president, desperately needed to breathe new life into his flailing campaign, which entered the night at the bottom of a moderate muddle behind former South Bend, Indiana, Buttigieg and Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar. And after a bad finish last week in New Hampshire, Massachusetts Sen. Warren was fighting just to stay in the conversation.

The debate was set at the Paris Las Vegas hotel on the heart of the Las Vegas Strip, bringing the political circus alongside the showgirls, slot machines and glitz that Las Vegas is known for. The casino, which sits directly across the Strip from the Bellagio’s famous fountains, features a replica Eiffel Tower out front with legs that extend inside into the casino floor.

As Democrats were clustered inside the casino, outside on the Las Vegas Strip, Republicans hired a mobile electronic billboard truck to drive slowly in front of tourists, flashing a message promoting Trump’s reelection.