But it wasn’t just her exit that paved the way for that; it was also her performance of the past few weeks. While Warren didn’t gain traction herself, she played a bigger role than anyone in forcing billionaire Mike Bloomberg out of the race. It’s among her most significant achievements in the contest — a consolation prize, no doubt, for a candidate whose campaign literally sold mugs with “billionaire tears” written on the side.

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Warren’s decimation of the former New York mayor began two weeks ago in the Nevada debate — his first as a presidential candidate. At the time, Bloomberg was carpet-bombing Super Tuesday states with ads, virtually uncontested, and rising in the polls. And we pretty much knew he’d be a focal point for the other candidates.

But nobody executed it like Warren. As I wrote that night, she took the bark off him:

She jumped in early, throwing out some derogatory quotes about women — “fat broads” and “horse-faced lesbians” — and then pointing out they weren’t said by President Trump, but instead reportedly by Bloomberg. We can’t “substitute one arrogant billionaire for another,” she said. Later, she attacked Bloomberg’s apology for his stop-and-frisk policy, which disproportionately targeted minorities. “This isn’t about how it turned out; this is about what it was designed to do to begin with,” Warren said. “It’s targeted black and brown men from the beginning.” And then she went after Bloomberg for not sufficiently addressing the treatment of women at his companies. “And I hope you heard what his defense was: ‘I’ve been nice to some women,’ ” Warren said, before pressing Bloomberg to release women from nondisclosure agreements. Others piled on, and Bloomberg didn’t have much of an answer for any of it.

The attacks actually drew a significant concession from Bloomberg, who released three women from nondisclosure agreements. But Warren wasn’t satisfied. Even after Sanders won in Nevada and looked to be taking control of the race, Warren in the South Carolina debate last week remained trained like a laser on Bloomberg.

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Bloomberg became exasperated that his response wasn’t sufficient for Warren — “I don’t know what else she wants us to do” and “the trouble is with this senator, enough is never enough” — but she kept at it. She focused on an accusation that he had told a women who became pregnant to “kill it” (which Bloomberg denies). By the end, Bloomberg had again come off as dismissive, suggesting these really just boiled down to bad “jokes” and trying to sweep it all under the rug.

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Warren also picked up where she left off on Bloomberg and racial minorities, accusing him of “blaming the housing crash of 2008 on African Americans and on Latinos.” When she was asked about whether Chinese firms should be allowed to build American infrastructure, she again pivoted to attacking Bloomberg. “We know that Mayor Bloomberg has been doing business with China for a long time, and he is the only one on this stage who has not released his taxes,” she said. She went after him for supporting Republican Senate candidates, including her 2012 opponent, then-Sen. Scott Brown (R-Mass.), and questioned his loyalty to a party he only rejoined in 2018.

“I don’t care how much money Mayor Bloomberg has,” she said. “The core of the Democratic Party will never trust him. He has not earned their trust. I will. And the fact that he cannot earn the trust of the core of the Democratic Party means he is the riskiest candidate standing on this stage.”

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It was devastating. There was plenty of material to work with on Bloomberg, but nobody put it together like Warren.

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At the time of the first debate with Bloomberg, he was riding high in many Super Tuesday states and even competing for wins. By the time Super Tuesday actually rolled around, he failed to hit the 15 percent threshold for winning delegates in 10 out of 14 states. His best finishes were in states with heavy early and absentee voting totals, like Colorado, where he might have gotten votes before his Warren-inspired decline could truly register.

The problem for Warren was that none of it seemed to accrue to her own benefit. She cleared the delegate threshold in just five states and underperformed both her national and Super Tuesday poll numbers. There was no momentum from the debates. If anything, she lost ground.

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It was basically a replay of Chris Christie’s attacks on Marco Rubio in 2016. In a famous exchange before the New Hampshire primary, Christie tore apart Rubio for repeating stock phrases — only to see Rubio do it again. Christie didn’t help himself with those attacks, getting just 7 percent in New Hampshire, and he dropped out immediately. But he’s widely acknowledged to have played a major role in killing off Rubio’s chances of beating Donald Trump in the 2016 Republican primaries.

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And that’s what Warren’s campaign should be remembered for. She was never really competing for the nomination once voting actually began, but she has clearly had an impact on who emerged from Super Tuesday. Perhaps Bloomberg would have fizzled even without the concerted campaign against him from Warren, but nobody drove the anti-Bloomberg message as effectively. And it needed to happen on the debate stage, given Bloomberg’s massive advertising edge nationwide.

In an appearance announcing her exit from the campaign on Thursday, Warren reflected on the campaign by saying: “We have been willing to fight, and, when necessary, we left plenty of blood and teeth on the floor. And I can think of one billionaire who has been denied the chance to buy this election.”