Democratic debate in South Carolina

Mike Bloomberg, touting the millions he spent to help elect Democrats to the House in 2018, came close to saying that he “bought” the race, but caught himself and said, “I got them.”

He added: “All of the new Democrats that came in, put Nancy Pelosi in charge, and gave the Congress the ability to control this President, I boug… I got them.”

Pete Buttigieg on Tuesday night echoed the fears some Democrats have about nominating Bernie Sanders, using a back-and-forth with the Vermont senator to warn that a candidate at the top of the ticket who self-identifies as a “democratic socialist” could hurt down ballot races for the House and Senate.

Buttigieg said nominating Sanders would lead to “four more years of Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy as Speaker of the House, and the inability to get the Senate in Democratic hands.”

“The time has come to stop acting like the presidency is the only office that matters. Not only is this a way to get Donald Trump re-elected. We have a House to worry about. We have a Senate to worry about. And this is really important,” Buttigieg continued.

More moderate Democrats – including those who won their seats in 2018 – have publicly expressed concerns about what Sanders atop the ticket would mean for down ballot races.

Buttigieg, as he has focused most of his attacks on Sanders, has stoked these fears, highlighting what he believes is the need to defend these House seats and broaden the Democratic base.

“If you want to keep the house in Democratic hands, you might want to check with the people who actually turned the house blue,” Buttigieg said. “Forty Democrats who are not running on your platform. They are running away from your platform as fast as they possibly can. I want to send those Democrats back to the United States House.”

After the Nevada caucuses, Pete Buttigieg went after Bernie Sanders:

Joe Biden and Tom Steyer attacked each other’s records on race in a tense exchange as the two men vie for the support of African American voters in South Carolina ahead of Saturday’s primary. 

Biden lambasted the billionaire businessman for investing in private prisons.

“You wrote the crime bill,” Steyer shot back, referencing the 1994 legislation signed into law by former President Bill Clinton and noting that it had imposed stiff mandatory minimum sentences that had left hundreds of thousands of black and brown people in jail. 

“Tommy come lately,” Biden quipped as Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar interjected and ended the exchange. 

We're tracking approximate speaking times during tonight's debate. As of the first commercial break, Sen. Elizabeth Warren currently leads the pack with almost six minutes, followed by Sen. Bernie Sanders. See the full breakdown below, and follow along live here.

Addressing her fellow candidates on stage, Sen. Amy Klobuchar said, "If we spend the next four months tearing our party apart, we're going to watch Donald Trump spend the next four years tearing our country apart."

She continued by pointing out that she does not think Bernie Sanders is the right person to nominate.

Elizabeth Warren called out Michael Bloomberg over reports he told a female employee, who told him she was pregnant, to "kill it."

Bloomberg denied having made the comment, shooting back: "I never said that."

Warren also hit Bloomberg for backing the Republican senator, Scott Brown, she challenged and defeated in 2012.

The Massachusetts senator first brought up Bloomberg's support for GOP Sen. Pat Toomey, who narrowly held off Democratic challenger Katie McGinty in 2016.

"He dumped $12 million into the Pennsylvania Senate race to help re-elect an anti-choice, right-wing Republican senator. And I just want to say, the woman challenger was terrific," Warren said of the Toomey-McGinty race. 

Then Warren turned to her own race.

"In 2012, (Bloomberg) scooped in to try to defend another Republican senator against a woman challenger," Warren said. "That was me. It didn't work, but he tried hard."

Asked if he thought New York City's implementation of "stop and frisk" under former New York City Mayor Mike Bloomberg was racist, former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg responded, "Yes, in effect, it was."

He added: "Because it was about profiling people based on their race."

Buttigieg went on to point out that he's "conscious of the fact that there are seven white people on this stage talking about racial justice."

Pete Buttigieg used an exchange with Bernie Sanders over the number of billionaires who have donated to his campaign to hit back at the Vermont senator — and then raise some money.

Sanders, hitting back at a number of attacks he was facing on Tuesday, said, “Americans don't want candidates to be running to billionaires for huge amounts of funding.” He specifically called out Buttigieg.

The former mayor said it was “untrue” and noted that his campaign has donations from more than 2,000 people “in Charleston alone.”

Sanders was seen laughing at the pitch.

Joe Biden criticized Bernie Sanders for his votes against the Brady Bill in 1993 and reports that the Vermont senator considered a primary campaign against then-President Barack Obama in 2012 — which Sanders denies. 

Biden said he’d sought a longer waiting period before handgun purchases in the Brady Bill than what Sanders had supported. He noted that the debate was taking place within walking distance of the Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, the site of a 2015 massacre at which a white supremacist gunman left nine dead.

He also pointed to reports about Sanders having considered a primary challenge against Obama — a potentially significant negative for Sanders in South Carolina, a state where more than half the Democratic primary electorate is African American. 

“Let’s talk about progressive: Progressive is getting things done, and that’s what we got done — we got a lot done,” Biden said.