More than a half-century ago, when law schools boasted a high flunk-out rate, unsmiling deans welcomed each incoming class by saying, “Look at the student on your left. Look at the student on your right. One of you won’t be here next year.”

That desperate paper-chase tradition defined the two debates hosted by CNN this week. More than half the 20 Democrats onstage at Detroit’s Fox Theatre are unlikely to meet the stringent requirements the Democratic National Committee has imposed on candidates who hope to qualify for the next debate, on September 12 in Houston. At the moment, only seven have qualified. The rest spent Tuesday and Wednesday evenings petrified that their time in Detroit would be their swan song as legitimate candidates.

As a result, the debates offered a ferocity more common on the eve of the Iowa caucuses than during early encounters when candidates normally would be introducing themselves and ballyhooing their accomplishments. Small wonder that Democrats Wednesday night frequently accused each other of using “Republican talking points.”

Sure, CNN’s three moderators did everything in their power to provoke controversy in the hopes that such pyrotechnics would goose ratings. But it was the sense that the field would soon be winnowed which set off the biggest fireworks, particularly on Wednesday night, when struggling candidates, mired in the middle or bottom of the pack, launched desperate, pay-attention-to-me-please attacks on front-runners like Joe Biden, hoping to create a made-for-TV moment that would be endlessly replayed on cable, prompting a wave of online donations and a bump in the national surveys. (That dynamic might explain why Tulsi Gabbard, for instance, strafed Kamala Harris’s mixed record on criminal justice.)

As a result, the Democrats came across as a party fractured by deep ideological fissures over health care, immigration, and criminal justice.