Last week, the Surge wondered how Sanders would survive three hours of the snap tactical decision-making, and standing, required in Tuesday’s debate, his first public event since suffering a heart attack only two weeks earlier. We figured just getting through the debate would have been a job well done. But even without factoring in those lowered expectations, Sanders turned in arguably his best debate performance of the cycle. It was the same aggressively on-message Bernie Sanders, but with less shouting and an extra dose of humor. He came off as the most honest supporter of “Medicare for All” while Elizabeth Warren repeatedly evaded a point-blank question about its financing. He ripped Joe Biden after the former vice president claimed he was the only one onstage who’d “gotten anything really big done,” running through a litany of some of Biden’s most unsavory achievements. More important than any of this, though, may have been the news that broke in the middle of the debate: New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, one of the most well-known Democrats in the country, would endorse Sanders at a Queens rally on Saturday. The rollout had the trappings of a long-canned endorsement that Sanders could use at a time when he needs it. With Elizabeth Warren entering a new phase of intense, front-runner scrutiny, now is the time.