There's an old switcheroo-at-the-end joke that goes: "I went to see the fights, but a hockey game broke out instead." After tonight, this can now be updated to: "I went to see the fights, but a Democratic presidential debate broke out instead." In fact, the best word I can think of to describe what we all just saw is "brutal." Maybe for the next debate, we should have a metal detector installed so that nobody can bring any brass knuckles to the podium? Just a thought.

Heading into the ninth Democratic debate, Michael Bloomberg was always going to be the main target, and he certainly did receive a goodly amount of attacks tonight. But in the hours leading up to the debate, two national polls were released which were nothing short of stunning. In one, Bernie Sanders led the field with 31 percent support from Democratic voters, which put him ahead of Bloomberg by an astonishing 12 points. The other one showed him with 32 percent support, which was double the second-place showing of 16 percent, for Joe Biden. That shifted the dynamic of tonight's debate, because both Bernie and Bloomberg seemed to get an equal amount of incoming attacks from the other four candidates on stage. And there was more than just a whiff of desperation out of all four of them.

Tonight was the most high-energy debate yet in the Democratic race, as a result. It was also the first one without any gadfly candidates (sorry Tom and Andrew, but the truth hurts sometimes). We had the six top candidates onstage, and no others. All of these candidates will be back for the next debate as well, which will be squeezed in between the Nevada caucuses and the South Carolina primary, next week.

At several points during the debate, the moderators lost complete control of what was going on, as the candidates tried to out-shout each other. We've had such lively moments in previous debates, but tonight it happened from beginning to end, really. It was like watching a rock concert composed entirely of encore songs, with no slow numbers to break up the pace at all. Nobody's going to be bringing up how Bernie Sanders was shouting last night, because all the candidates equalled him in volume, all night long.

Some of the questions tonight were pretty good, which made for a welcome change. But in reality the questions didn't even matter much, because each candidate took the opportunity to slam their opponents almost without regard to the subject at hand. It's a pretty safe bet, at this point, that Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar genuinely do not like one another, to draw the most obvious conclusion from all the punching matches we saw. But they certainly weren't the only ones taking the gloves off. In fact, the gloves came off from the very beginning, when the first question posed might well have been: "Would all the other candidates like to take a gratuitous opening shot at Michael Bloomberg, just to 'welcome' him to the debate process?" All of them eagerly took this opportunity and absolutely ran with it, setting the tone for the entire evening.

But let's break down the candidates' performances, one by one. As usual, all quotes were hastily jotted down and might not be word-for-word accurate, but reflect the gist of what was said (all errors are mine, in other words, for which I apologize in advance). And we're going to list the candidates tonight in reverse alphabetical order, for no particular reason.

Elizabeth Warren

Elizabeth Warren obviously drew the conclusion from the last debate that Amy Klobuchar boosted her support (as shown by the New Hampshire results) by being as feisty as possible. So Warren was much more engaged tonight than she was in the last debate.

One irrelevant note: Warren is coming off a cold, and at times her voice sounded pretty scratchy, but this actually seemed to get better for her as the night wore on rather than the reverse.

Warren was the second candidate (after Bernie Sanders) to take a gigantic potshot at Bloomberg in her first response, telling the audience that we didn't want a billionaire who called women "fat broads and horse-faced lesbians" in the White House -- but (surprise!) she wasn't talking about Trump, she was talking about Bloomberg. As I mentioned, this set the tone for the whole night's beatdown of Bloomberg. She ended with: "We can't substitute one arrogant billionaire for another." She also later hit Mike for blaming minorities for the housing crisis (the redlining quote) and for the design of the stop-and-frisk policing plan.

Warren didn't hold back on any of the other candidates on stage, either. She struck back at both Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar for not fully documenting their healthcare reform plans on their website, calling Pete's "a Power Point presentation," and brutally dismissing Klobuchar's plan on her website as "a Post-It note with: 'Insert plan here' written on it." Klobuchar did have a pretty funny comeback for this, but we'll save that for her review section. Warren later returned to this, saying Amy only had "two paragraphs" on her website as her entire healthcare reform plan. Warren is really justified in this attack, since her own healthcare reform plan was scrutinized under such a microscope by the media, which no other Democratic candidate has yet had to endure -- and which may have contributed to her early surge collapsing.

Warren did, however, later stand up for Klobuchar when the subject of not knowing the Mexican president's name came up, which Amy did appreciate. But over the course of the night, Warren took on Klobuchar several times over her "think small" campaign, which was pretty effective. Warren even took at least one shot at Bernie -- when asked whether having a Democratic Socialist on the ticket would be a good idea, Warren responded that she was "worried about gambling on a narrow vision" rather than supporting capitalism generally.

Warren also took on Biden, citing a bizarre quote from him while he was vice president: "I hope Mitch McConnell gets re-elected so I can keep working with him." It'll be interesting to hear the fact-checkers dig out the actual quote, and the context in which it was said.

Warren's best moment of the whole night, however, was when she absolutely savaged Bloomberg over all those non-disclosure agreements his company has with women who have complained about him creating a hostile and sexist workplace. Bloomberg really should have been prepared for this question, but he just utterly went down in flames. Warren just would not let him weasel out of it, responding to his saying he hires lots of women with: "I'm sorry, but 'I've been nice to some women' just isn't good enough." When he refused to admit how many non-disclosure agreements there were, she was equally as persistent: "'Some' is how many?" Warren clearly came out the victor of this exchange, as she quite obviously tore Bloomberg a new one, right there on the stage. The audience gave her a huge round of applause at the end of it, too. My guess is that this clip will be the one most played in post-debate analysis.

Bernie Sanders

Bernie took a lot of heat tonight, but not much of it was actually anything new. He's taken almost exactly the same heat before on most of these subjects in previous debates, and his answers haven't changed one bit. It was more concentrated tonight, but there were only a few new issues raised.

One thing that may not have been completely new but got a lot more prominence was the charge that the online "Bernie Bros" were both out of control and directly Bernie's fault. Pete Buttigieg brought this up early (before the moderators could even raise it, which they were obviously about to do), and referenced the ugly responses to the Culinary Union (the biggest Union in Nevada) panning Medicare For All. Bernie -- once again -- disavowed anyone who would make threats online or exhibit vicious behavior in any form, saying: "We've got 10.6 million people on Twitter and 99.9 percent of them" are loving people who support his campaign. He went on: "I disown those people who aren't, they are not part of my movement at all." Pete refused to let the issue go and the back-and-forth between the two got more heated than even the attacks on Bloomberg. At one point, Bernie dismissed Pete with the claim: "We have more Union support than you've ever dreamed of," but he was more effective when he pointed out that all kinds of vicious things get said online and his was not the only campaign that was at fault in this regard, stating: "You should see the attacks our supporters get" from others. As I said, this subject has come up before but it's never been aired in such stark terms. And this all happened in the first five or ten minutes of the debate, showing that Bloomberg wasn't the only one with a big target on his back.

The one new subject that Bernie had to deal with tonight is one that the media has been making much of lately -- Bernie had previously said he'd release full medical records, but has only released partial records in the form of letters from his doctors. Now, I haven't seen any medical records released by any of the other candidates, but then again this may not have been as newsworthy (in other words, they might have done so, but it was considered a non-story) because nobody else on the stage has experienced a heart attack during the campaign. Bernie's answer was kind of weak, admittedly, but this will likely not be an issue in the general election since Trump hasn't released any medical records either.

Bernie gave as good as he got, when it came to Bloomberg. He highlighted the fact that Bloomberg used to be a Republican, pointing out that he had supported George W. Bush -- and did not support Barack Obama -- while donating to several GOP senators as well. This is an issue that really should be more potent, but it kind of got lost in all the other Bloomberg attacks. Bernie also got into it with Mike a bit on the subject of how the system had been "bought by billionaires," pointing out how his wealth was more than that owned by 120 million Americans, to which Bloomberg responded: "You wrote the tax code!" But nobody really buys the idea that the inequalities in the tax code are somehow all Bernie's fault.

The attacks on "socialism" were also ramped up tonight, but Bernie fought back pretty strongly when the moderator brought up a recent poll that showed how high a percentage of Americans would hesitate to vote for "a socialist." Bernie shot back: "Who was winning that poll you mentioned?" which pointed out the fact that the media really has a big problem admitting that Bernie is now the unquestioned frontrunner in the race. Bernie then launched yet another explanation of how "socialism for the rich" was the norm now, and all he really wants is a little fairer treatment for the non-billionaires.

Bernie's shining moment, however, came when the moderator asked every candidate a deceptively easy question: "If we reach the convention and no candidate has a majority of the delegates, should the candidate with the most delegates become the nominee?" Every single one of the others refused to support the idea, which only shows how scared they all are right now of Bernie beating the field. When it came to be Bernie's turn, he responded: "The will of the people should prevail."

Amy Klobuchar

Amy Klobuchar, in the previous debate, did herself a lot of good by being argumentative and feisty. Tonight, she doubled down on this approach (to be fair, so did everyone else), but (to me at least) this wound up crossing over into coming off as downright angry at the other candidates on stage with her. This kind of puts the lie to all her "Midwestern values" and "bringing people together" campaign themes, when you think about it.

Her opening shot at Bloomberg was one of the weaker ones, but she made up for it later on. But the most noticeable disagreements came when Amy and Pete got into it in a big way. This dynamic has been building over the course of the past few debates, I should mention, so it should really have come as no surprise, but it never got quite as vicious as it did tonight. These two just plain don't like each other, it's obvious. And they're both running on the whole "bringing people together" idea, so what does that say?

Amy's best moment (in terms of being funny, at any rate) came in response to Warren slamming her for her "Post-It note" healthcare reform plan. This really could not have been scripted, since who would have prepared for exactly this line? But Klobuchar's response was priceless: "I take personal offense, because Post-It notes were invented in my state." Few today remember it, but "3M" used to be a business called the "Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company," so Klobuchar had a valid point. The line got a big laugh, too. Even if her defense of her healthcare plan (or the absence thereof) was nowhere near as impressive.

Klobuchar's weakest moment, though, came in trying to once again explain why a life-sentence case that happened when she was prosecutor was now under review. She's stumbled on this issue before, so you'd think she'd have a better response, but her response essentially equates to: "I support a review of this case, which I obviously may have screwed up." She also had another weak moment trying to explain why she "couldn't remember" the name of the president of Mexico, when she tried to reel off some flash-card foreign policy facts but it fell flat. When Mayor Pete hit her hard for it, Klobuchar's anger came to the fore: "Are you trying to say I'm dumb? Are you mocking me?" The anger was palpable, to put it mildly.

The other notable dustup between the two happened when Pete savaged Amy for her voting record on immigration and supporting Trump nominees and judges. Klobuchar shot back: "I wish everyone was as perfect as you, Pete," and then the two had a shouting match over who was right about her record. Klobuchar ended it with some more heat: "You've memorized a bunch of talking points -- I've been in the arena."

Klobuchar's most honest moment came at the end, as she was given the first closing statement. She began with: "This has been quite a debate." You can say that again, Amy.

Pete Buttigieg

Pete Buttigieg quite obviously also decided that Klobuchar's big bump in support after the last debate was worth attempting, and he was more negative and hard-hitting than he's ever been before. He got into several dustups with Klobuchar, but he also trained his sights on everyone else on the stage as well.

Pete began by being more honest than most, in his first statement. He pointed out that the race was now in danger of being narrowed down to Sanders-versus-Bloomberg, especially after Super Tuesday. But he failed to note that this meant that the message of his campaign (as well as all the others) obviously wasn't resonating as well as the two frontrunners. As usual, he had a catchy phrase to describe "a contest between one candidate who wants to burn this party down versus one who wants to buy this party outright."

Early on, Pete launched the first attacks against Bernie, and he returned to take potshots at him all night, but (once again) we've already heard most of these complaints already, and Bernie has a ready answer for most of them. And as with all the other candidates, Pete got in plenty of good jabs at Bloomberg as well.

But Pete's most notably fierce attacks happened against Klobuchar, at least to our ears. When he was hitting her on forgetting (or not knowing, more likely) the name of the Mexican president, Pete pointed out that Amy sat on several Senate foreign policy committees, so she really should know this stuff. "It's not trivia -- you're on the committee" he scolded her. Pete also got in a great comeback for Klobuchar's repeated boasting of her Minnesota election record, saying that if doing well in Minnesota means you should be president, then we'd all remember "President Walter Mondale." An obscure (even "Baby Boomer") reference; but for those who recognized it, it was a pretty good one.

Pete's funniest moment of the night, unfortunately, happened right before Klobuchar's "Post-It" funny comeback, when in response to Warren's "PowerPoint" jibe, Buttigieg responded: "I'm more of a Microsoft Word guy."

Pete's best moment of the night probably came when he was asked an interesting question, about an essay he had written a long time ago where he specifically praised Bernie Sanders for his socialism. The question was framed as: "Are you out of touch with your own generation?" Pete turned this around masterfully, responding: "I was into Bernie before Bernie was cool," which got a big laugh from the audience (as it deserved to).

Michael Bloomberg

Hoo boy. While I would bet that supporters of all the other candidates tonight would all argue that their candidate "won" the debate, I would also bet that the consensus would easily be -- among virtually everyone who watched -- that Michael Bloomberg was unquestionably tonight's biggest loser. At times, it was like watching one of those war movies where the fighter plane gets hit, starts smoking, dives into a tailspin, and then proceeds to screamingly go down in flames. Yes, it really was that bad.

Part of Bloomberg's problem was the relentlessness of the attacks against him. Every other candidate on that stage has been through eight of these debates already, and they were in no mood to give Mike a free pass for trying to cut to the front of the line. So they unleashed nine debates' worth of attacks, in one night.

Like the first Rocky movie's fight scene, this was both brutal and bloody. You could even call it worse than that, since there was no Adrian waiting to hug him at the end.

Bloomberg was really on defense the entire night. At times he tried to land some of his own punches, but with everyone ganging up on him they seldom had much of an impact. The whole thing was a bare-knuckle brawl in a back alley, complete with both blackjacks and brass knuckles. Maybe a better movie reference would be the epic fight scene in The Quiet Man? Bloomberg's old enough to remember that one, I bet.

OK, I'll stop with the boxing metaphors. But to be honest it's actually hard not to use them, after what just happened to Michael Bloomberg tonight.

Bloomberg, at several points, just flatly contradicted some claims thrown at him by the others, which will doubtlessly keep the fact-checkers up late tonight. But in the end, it probably won't matter who was technically right or wrong.

Bloomberg, throughout the entire night, gave off a sense of entitlement not yet seen on a Democratic debate stage (at least, not this time around). He chided other candidates for not letting him finish, but managed to sound condescending each time. The claims he used to counter others' arguments often left the audience silent, but the other candidates jumped in to fill these awkward moments. His answers on any number of subjects (stop-and-frisk, redlining, why he hasn't released his tax returns, why billionaires are treated so well by the tax code, his own incredible wealth) were not exactly very convincing. He was especially unconvincing when he tried to hit Bernie Sanders for having three houses (Bloomberg owns more than a dozen, himself).

Now, I've seen bad debate performances before. But I have to admit I've never seen such a negative response from an in-house audience before. Michael Bloomberg was actively and loudly booed several times tonight, and he didn't exactly react well. He oozed hostility and condescension, which makes it all the more understandable why he hasn't been giving any media interviews since he started his campaign. The relentless stream of attacks obviously got under his skin in a major way, and he didn't do a very good job of hiding this fact. He looked not just uncomfortable -- as many candidates giving bad debate performances do -- but downright belligerent. This is not a good look for a Democrat, obviously.

Bloomberg had two really bad moments, one short and one prolonged. The short one was when he outright accused Bernie Sanders of being a communist: "We've tried that -- it was called communism and it didn't work." The audience gasped and then booed him, and Bernie later rightly smacked him for taking such a "cheap shot."

But the worst moment of the night for Bloomberg came at the hands of Elizabeth Warren, when the subject of his workplace behavior came up. When Mike tried to tout his company's record (and his mayoral record) on how many women he hired by offering up lots of stats, Warren dropped the "I've been nice to some women" bombshell on him. She pressed him hard on the subject of the unknown number of non-disclosure agreements which were all signed (obviously) to keep women quiet about what Bloomberg said and did and put up with while running his company. Bloomberg wouldn't admit how many of these there were ("very few") to which Warren hit back "How many of them were there? How many?" Towards the end, even Joe Biden weighed in ("It's easy, all you have to do is say: 'I release them from the non-disclosure agreements,' right here on this stage tonight") but Bloomberg kept trying to dodge the issue entirely. To no avail.

Bloomberg's position, as stated, is either unbelievable or completely unacceptable to most Democratic voters, which is why he went down in flames. His first answer was that there weren't that many times he or his company had to pay women off (and make them sign non-disclosure agreements) for him being a sexist pig in the workplace. That didn't go over well with the audience. Then he tried to shift to: "I just made a few jokes," which really didn't go over well (this is the year 2020, after all). But his final answer was his worst: that the women involved were the ones who wanted to keep everything quiet. In other words, they requested non-disclosure agreements from him, in order to protect their own privacy. This is what got him several rounds of extended booing from the audience, which he fully deserved.

All it is going to take to put the lie to Bloomberg's claim is one woman to give an interview on national television where she says: "I had to sign a non-disclosure agreement with Michael Bloomberg, but I was not the one who demanded this -- he was." Whether such a women then goes on to break her N.D.A. and talk about what happened to her or not, this will still prove to the world that Bloomberg is flat-out lying about the whole situation.

Personally, I never expected Bloomberg to do so badly tonight. He can afford the top political talent in the business, and he had to have known this issue would be raised. He should have been more prepared for it, no matter what you think of his candidacy (love him or hate him, in other words). But he was either woefully unprepared or the questions just got under his skin to the point where he forgot all the political advice he had paid for. Either way, his answers were terrible and they were all loudly booed by the audience.

I have no idea how much tonight is going to blunt Bloomberg's rise as a Democratic presidential candidate, but he certainly didn't do himself any favors tonight. A lot will depend on how it all plays out in the media (well, the non-Bloomberg-owned media, at any rate). I would be willing to bet -- at the very least -- he's going to struggle to maintain the level of support he now has with women voters, just for starters. I have no idea how many people watched tonight's debate, and I have no idea how many people are going to hear about it in the news (and, more importantly, which clips will make the highlights reel). But I would certainly expect tonight's performance to have a visible effect on all those voters who -- up until this moment -- have been convinced by his ad blitz to consider voting for Bloomberg. He really had that bad a night, in other words.

Joe Biden

Sigh. Joe Biden. Yep, he's still in the race. There he was on the debate stage and all....

Biden launched a few attacks at Michael Bloomberg tonight, but then again so did everyone else. He backed up Elizabeth Warren while she was ripping Bloomberg a new one over the non-disclosure agreement issue.

Personally, though, Joe didn't have much of a presence on stage tonight to me. In fact, the most interesting thing that happened while he was speaking was a protest from the audience (which I could not identify, because their screamed slogans weren't audible enough) right before Joe gave his closing statement.

I hate to say it, but even if he finishes second in Nevada and wins South Carolina outright, Joe Biden already seems like somewhat of a has-been.

OK, that's it for my debate wrapup. It's late at night, so I want to get this posted. And then (as always) I will go take a look at all the other pundits to see whether we agree on any of this or not. As always, feel free to correct me yourselves, down in the comments, if you think I've got it wrong.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant