A Bernie slayer fails to emerge at Tuesday's debate

By the end, it was clear there was no Bernie slayer at the lecterns in Charleston, someone who alone had the time and skills to convince Democratic voters that the democratic socialist was a radical whose nomination would forfeit the party’s chance to defeat Donald Trump.This was not quite a kitchen sink debate where everything is thrown at the frontrunner, but more of a distillation of several strains of attack unique to each of Sanders' opponents. At the Charleston debate, Bloomberg tried to use Russia’s alleged pro-Sanders disposition to discredit him. “Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States,” he said, “and that's why Russia is helping you get elected.”Later, Bloomberg tried to jab at Sanders over the senator’s comments praising Fidel Castro’s literacy and health care programs, which Sanders defended again on Monday in an interview on CNN. “The math does not add up,” Klobuchar said, noting that his plans would cost more than three times the size of the entire American economy and reminding voters that back in the fall it was no less an authority on winning a general election as a Democrat than Barack Obama who warned about proposing ambitious plans that are beyond “where the voters of this country are.”After Klobuchar delivered her lines, several candidates — Klobuchar, Buttigieg, Steyer, Sanders, Biden — descended into a free-for-all as they each attempted to get a word in and two moderators tried to gain control of the conversation.