Sunday’s debate exposed the clear differences in political strategy and style between the two remaining Democratic candidates. Sanders is a smash and grab debater. He hurls a rock through the plate glass of the Clinton general store and runs down the street delighted with his direct strike at big business. Clinton, on the other hand, is a wrestler of a debater.

Sure enough, he landed another bull’s eye on Clinton’s highly paid speeches to Wall Street, leaving Clinton apparently laughing at the irony that Republican candidates won’t release the transcripts of their speaking gigs.

Knowing that Sanders would hit her on Wall Street, she engaged in a lengthy discussion on his vote against the bailout of the auto industry in 2009. Sanders, standing in Flint, had no answer for the vote – other than to retreat into his corner opposing Wall Street’s bailout.

“Excuse me,” Sanders said testily as Clinton interjected again and again on the auto bailout. “I am talking.”

Yes, but he wasn’t talking about the auto bailout.

That was just the start of Clinton’s move towards a full nelson. She challenged Sanders on his refusal to support the Export-Import Bank, which helps finance export businesses – big and small. Sanders said he didn’t want to help companies like Boeing; Clinton said the Exim Bank helped 240 small businesses in Michigan, where they were debating.

Then came Clinton’s lunge for the full body slam. The moment came after a question from the father of a teenager victim of the recent mass shooting in Kalamazoo that left six dead last month: why did Sanders want to protect gun manufacturers from lawsuits when he was so opposed to helping any other part of corporate America?

Sanders dropped his usual rhetorical clarity to argue the legalese around liability. Echoing the argument of the National Rifle Association, he said the lawsuits would end gun manufacturing in America.

Then he puffed out his beetroot colored cheeks, and raised his eyebrows to allow his eyes to boggle further. As if to say: I just rolled the dice on my whole campaign right there.

“You talk about corporate greed,” said Clinton. “The gun manufacturers sell guns to make as much money as they can make”.

Still, whatever the contrast between the Democrats on the debate stage, it was nothing compared to the yawning chasm between the Flint debate and the last several Republican exchanges.

There were some notable moments of righteous indignation – and even some heated points of attack by both Clinton and Sanders. But mostly the Democratic debate in Flint, Michigan, was less an exchange of views than an exercise in violent agreement.

With few points of policy dispute between the two, the candidates chose instead to discuss their voting records. Some of those records involved going back 20 years to the landmark moments of the 1990s: welfare reform, the 1994 crime bill and free trade agreements.

Clinton and Sanders began their debate expressing outrage about the water poisoning in Flint, and detailed their policy proposals for dealing with the scandal and preventing future outrages.

The Republican candidates began their debate by comparing the size of their digits.

The Democratic candidates talked about their personal history in the civil rights movement even as they admitted they could not claim to have experienced what African Americans suffer through systemic and institutionalized racism.

The Republican candidates talked instead about how they would never accept undocumented immigrants as US citizens, discussing instead how to deport millions of families across the country.

So when the inevitable Donald Trump question came, it was a surprisingly insightful one.

Sanders discussed, in Trump-like fashion, how well he was doing in the polls compared to some other Democratic candidate standing next to him. Clinton, in contrast, argued that Trump’s “bigotry and bullying” would not wear well on the American people.

Does it take a populist or a realist to beat the great orange hope? So far, in the Republican race, nothing seems to have worked. As this election moves rapidly to a national, cross-party contest, those strategies – and their impact – could look very different.