Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton debate in Miami. Photograph by Melina Mara/The Washington Post via Getty

After suffering a shocking loss to Bernie Sanders in Michigan on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton didn’t get much relief at the latest Democratic debate, which was held in Miami last night. In fact, the event turned into something of an ordeal for the front-runner. The result in Michigan framed the debate, which was organized by the Spanish-language network Univision, the Washington_ _Post, and Facebook. Clinton was asked tough questions, and her opponent, who was clearly revelling in the moment, displayed a bit of swagger.

It wasn’t that Clinton performed poorly. To the contrary, she displayed her usual command of the issues, kept calm under hostile fire, and got in a few slams at Sanders. For much of the evening, however, she was put on the defensive, and the event seemed to encapsulate some of the problems that have dogged her campaign, which was was widely expected to be a quick victory march but has instead turned into a long slog. She’s carrying a lot of baggage from her past; she’s facing a happy warrior bearing a simple, bold message that he repeats like a metronome; and she doesn’t have a similarly arresting theme or a charismatic political persona to fall back on.

The first question put to Clinton was why she lost in Michigan. Understandably, she dodged it. (What was she going to say: “Because the voters favored Bernie”?) The second set of questions she received was about the private e-mail server she used while she was Secretary of State. “So who specifically gave you permission to operate your e-mail system as you did?” Univision’s Jorge Ramos asked. “Was it President Barack Obama? And would you drop out of the race if you get indicted?”

Clinton somehow managed to smile. “Well, Jorge, there’s a lot of questions in there,” she said. “And I’m going to give the same answer I’ve been giving for many months.” She went on, “It wasn’t the best choice. I made a mistake. It was not prohibited. It was not in any way disallowed. And as I have said, and as now has come out, my predecessors did the same thing and many other people in the government.”

Ramos pressed Clinton on whether Obama had given her permission, and she said that no permission was necessary. Then the Univision anchor repeated his question about whether she would drop out if she were indicted. “Oh, for goodness—” she said, not hiding her irritation. “That’s not going to happen. I’m not even answering that question.”

That exchange set the tone for the evening. After a long and detailed exchange on the two candidates’ records on immigration policy, during which they both promised to stop deporting undocumented workers, Clinton received another forceful question, this one from the Washington Post’s Karen Tumulty, a veteran political correspondent. “Secretary Clinton, a Washington Post poll just yesterday found that only thirty-seven per cent of Americans consider you honest and trustworthy,” she said. “Is there anything in your own actions and the decisions that you yourself have made that would foster this kind of mistrust?”

This time, Clinton didn’t smile. “Well, first, Karen, obviously it’s painful for me to hear that,” she said. “And I do take responsibility. When you’re in public life, even if you believe that it’s not an opinion that you think is fair or founded, you do have to take responsibility. And I do.”

For a moment, it seemed like Clinton would then admit more mistakes. Instead, she pivoted to argue that the reason many voters have a negative perception of her is that she is not a very good communicator. “Look, I have said before and it won’t surprise anybody to hear me say it, this is not easy for me,” Clinton said. “I am not a natural politician, in case you haven’t noticed, like my husband or President Obama. So I have a view that I just have to do the best I can, get the results I can, make a difference in people’s lives, and hope that people see that I’m fighting for them and that I can improve conditions economically and other ways that will benefit them and their families.”

As Clinton indicated, she has used these lines before, but only at town-hall meetings, not during televised debates. They sound authentic, because they are an acknowledgement of an uncomfortable truth: she doesn’t have the oratorical gifts of her husband or Obama. But her self-deprecating comments also demonstrated that she isn’t without political skills of her own. After all, the image she is trying to portray in this campaign is one of a dogged fighter who battles adversity to do what is right. What better way to get this message across than to advertise some of your own limitations?

The adversity wasn’t over for Clinton after that. To loud boos around the hall, Ramos brought up the 2012 attack on the U.S. consulate in the Libyan city of Benghazi. He showed a video clip in which a family member of one of the American victims accused Clinton of having lied when she said that the attack was sparked by an online video. Again, she gave a pretty effective answer. She said that she couldn’t even imagine the grief of the woman in the video, who had lost her son. “But she’s wrong,” Clinton said. “She’s absolutely wrong.” She added that “seven or eight congressional” investigations had failed to find any evidence of wrongdoing.

Ramos then brought up an e-mail Clinton sent to her daughter, Chelsea, on the night of the Benghazi incident, in which she said that a terrorist attack appeared to have taken place. “Jorge, that makes my point,” Clinton shot back. “At the time I e-mailed with my daughter, a terrorist group had taken credit for the attacks on our facility in Benghazi. Within sixteen, eighteen hours, they rescinded taking credit. They did it all on social media. And the video did play a role. We have captured one of the lead terrorists, and he admits it was both a terrorist attack and it was influenced by the video.”

While all of this was going on, Sanders was doing what he always does: taking the high road by refusing to get involved in any issues that Republicans have seized upon, like the e-mail server and Benghazi—but doing this while seeking to create an impression of Clinton as a warmongering captive of Wall Street.

After Sanders turned down an opportunity to talk about Benghazi, he brought up a recent two-part series in the _Times _that claimed that Clinton played a decisive role in persuading the White House to approve air strikes intended to help remove General Muammar Qaddafi, Libya’s authoritarian former leader. “Qaddafi was a brutal dictator, there’s no question,” Sanders said. “But one of the differences between the Secretary and I is I’m not quite so aggressive with regard to regime change. I voted against the war in Iraq because I had a fear of what would happen the day after.”

In addition to bringing up Iraq, which he does at every opportunity, Sanders needled Clinton about the highly paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs, once again demanding that she release the transcripts, which she has refused to do. “Do you think she was saying one thing in the speeches and another in public?” Tumulty asked him. Sanders replied gleefully, saying, “That is exactly what releasing the transcripts will tell us.” He went on, “This I do know. There is a reason why Wall Street has provided fifteen million dollars just in the last reporting period to the Secretary’s super PAC.”

Not that Sanders had it all his own way. Toward the end of the debate, he was presented with a clip of a 1985 interview in which he praised Fidel Castro, then the Cuban President, and the Nicaraguan Sandinista leader Daniel Ortega. Seizing on a scene from the interview in which Sanders apparently praised what he called “the revolution of values in Cuba,” Clinton said, “I just couldn’t disagree more. You know, if the values are that you oppress people, you disappear people, you imprison people, or even kill people for expressing their opinions, for expressing freedom of speech, that is not the kind of revolution of values that I ever want to see anywhere.”

Clinton appeared relieved to get a rare opportunity to go on the offensive. After a long night, that was understandable. “Well, thank you very much for a lively debate,” she said in her closing statement. “I appreciate greatly all the questions.”