Elizabeth Warren scored big last week with her combative performance in the Democratic primary debate in Las Vegas, Nevada, winning plaudits from the press and $5 million from impressed supporters.

On Tuesday, at a primary debate in Charleston, South Carolina, the Massachusetts senator tried to recreate her earlier success, repeating many of the same attack lines on the same 2020 primary opponents.

She landed with a thud.

Lines that went over so well in Las Vegas fell flat in Charleston, especially when Warren tried again to savage former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg over the issue of his nondisclosure agreements with former employees who allege he subjected them to sexist and demeaning comments. Bloomberg was prepared, and voters have heard the attacks before, leaving Warren looking both stale and lazy; the opposite of what she gave audiences last week.

“People want a chance,” the senator said as she attacked the former mayor over his nondisclosure agreements, “to hear from the women who have worked for [Bloomberg].”

“Let us have — the women have an opportunity to speak. The Bloomberg corporations and Mayor Bloomberg himself have been accused of discrimination,” Warren continued. “They are bound by nondisclosures so that they cannot speak. If he says there is nothing to hide here, then sign a blanket release and let those women speak out … so that they can tell their stories the way I can tell my story, without having the fear they're going to be sued by a billionaire.”

Bloomberg said at the Feb. 19 debate in Las Vegas that the things he reportedly said in the past, including referring to members of the British royal family as “fat broad” and "horse-faced lesbian," were merely off-color jokes. On Tuesday, he said it was “probably wrong to make the jokes.”

“If it bothered them, I was wrong, and I apologize,” he said. “I'm sorry for that. But what happened here is we went back 40 years, and we could only find three cases where women said they were uncomfortable. Nobody accused me of doing anything other than just making a comment or two.”

He added, “And what the senator did suggest was that we release these women from the nondisclosure agreement. I did that two days later, and my company has said we will not use nondisclosure agreements ever again. The senator has got it. And I don't know what else she wants us to do.”

This is where things fell apart for Warren.

“Oh, I'll be clear,” she said.

Bloomberg continued, “We're following exactly what she asked to do.”

“I'll tell you exactly what I want you to do,” Warren said.

“And the trouble is with this senator, enough is never enough for what this — I'm going to start focusing on some of these other things,” the former mayor said. “We just cannot continue to relitigate this every time. We did what she asked.”

Warren claimed then that Bloomberg did not do what she asked.

“What I asked the mayor to do is to do a release of all people who have discrimination claims,” she said.

“We are doing that, senator,” Bloomberg responded.

And that was that. That was the end of the exchange.

It did not improve from there for Warren, who spent the rest of the evening either repeating herself from last week or trying out new, but none-too-effective attacks on everyone but Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the clear front-runner.

But do not take my word for it when I say Warren laid an egg in Charleston. The same members of the press who were beside themselves with joy over the senator's debate in Las Vegas were muted Tuesday evening, having little, if anything, to say about her attempt to go big for a second time.

Mother Jones Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery, who said last week that the “runaway winner [in Las Vegas] was Warren,” did not have anything at all to say about the senator’s Tuesday debate. Vox, which claimed “Warren won” last week, had no similar proclamations Tuesday evening. HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter, who said last week that “Warren fought like hell … and sounded like a winner,” also had nothing to say about her role in the South Carolina debate. And so on.

It makes sense that Warren would try to recreate the success of the Nevada debate. After all, the $5 million her campaign raised afterward has allowed for her flailing candidacy to stay in the fight. Where Warren went wrong in South Carolina was thinking that the exact same routine would produce the exact same results. It is called the law of diminishing returns, and it is disconcerting, to say the least, that a 2020 primary candidate who would like to take control of the U.S. economy does not seem to understand the concept.