Bernie Sanders – and despite a late return to her podium post commercial break – Clinton “was the only one on stage Saturday night who looked like she could step into the presidency tomorrow”, according to the Washington Post’s analysis.

Despite the public Kumbaya, there have been clear signs that the Sanders campaign sees the fight with the DNC – which it’s treating as a proxy for the broader Democratic establishment – as advantageous.

Although it was scheduled for broadcast during football games, the middle of the “Star Wars” opening weekend and Christmas shopping, Saturday’s Democratic presidential debate should be remembered by voters. Bill Curry, the political columnist at Salon.com and former White House counselor to President Clinton, argues that the DNC is deliberately blocking debate and that chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz should resign as a result.

“Not only will I oppose any efforts to cut Social Security benefits”, Sanders said.

While a successful debate performance always calls for celebration within the respective campaign, the Clinton camp is likely extra thrilled its candidate scored while in New Hampshire. Those committees can spend the money themselves, or, like the Alaska Democrats, send the cash back to the DNC, since state-level parties can make unlimited transfers to their national affiliates – a move that Ryan said effectively allows the DNC to raise far more than the $33,400 legal limit on direct donations from individuals.

We need to make sure, Clinton said at the debate, that Trump’s more hateful rhetoric doesn’t “fall in receptive ears” overseas.

Sanders last visited Reno in August when 4,500 people clamored to the University of Nevada, Reno to watch him speak outside the Joe Crowley Student Union.

Clinton shot back that Sanders had supported a congressional resolution calling for Gadhafi’s removal in Libya.

Even when they criticized one another later on the issues, from regime change overseas to paying for college aid and health care at home, the three stuck primarily to substance, avoiding the highly personal, sometimes nasty tone of the most recent Republican debate four days earlier.

Sanders stated, “We have got to get our foreign policy and our priorities right”.

“I have said I want to be the president for the struggling, the striving and the successful”. O’Malley claimed that she changed her views on guns “every election year”, and Sanders reminded viewers of her 2002 vote to authorise the use of force in Iraq. None of the three uses the kind of incendiary language, proposes off-the-wall ideas and stirs angry emotions as Republican frontrunner Donald Trump does.

O’Malley hit Trump on the same topic, saying that the United States “must never surrender our American values to racists, must never surrender them to the fascist pleas of billionaires with big mouths”.

The debate also had its lighter moments, like when ABC moderator David Muir asked: “Should corporate America love Hillary Clinton?”

Over in the social media world, Bernie Sanders and his grassroots campaign continue to win the Internet primary.

Clinton has started to climb again, but Sanders’ numbers keep going up, too.