I predicted that Bernie Sanders would best Hillary Clinton during the first presidential debate, much as Donald Trump triumphed over the Republican presidential candidates. They both have an edginess and outsider willingness to challenge traditional conventions in a way that appeals to the base of their respective parties. Clinton was the establishment candidate, the Jeb Bush of the Democratic party, the candidate of the old ways the base was busy rejecting. It seemed an easy prediction.

I couldn’t have been more wrong. Instead, Sanders and most of the other candidates bent over backwards to let Clinton off the hook on the biggest scandal that could derail her campaign — Servergate.  When asked about Hillary’s emails, Sanders responded,

I think secretary [Clinton] is right, the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails. Same with the media. The middle class is collapsing, and want to know if well have a democracy or oligarchy. Enough of the emails.

The crowd cheered wildly. O’Malley chimed in and agreed, “We don’t have to be defined by the email scandal, we can discuss affordable college, etc.”

Lincoln Chafee was the only Democrat who dared to criticize Clinton over her emails, saying in a curiously shaky voice, “This is an issue of American credibility. I think we need someone with the best ethical standards.”

Moderator Anderson Cooper of CNN asked Clinton if she wanted to respond to Chafee, and she responded in an arrogant tone, “No,” to much applause. This seems to be evidence something funny is taking place. Did Clinton promise the other candidates cabinet positions in exchange for keeping quiet about Servergate? Or more sinister, did the Clinton machine make some kind of threat to the candidates? Was that why Chafee’s voice was shaking as he challenged her?

While Clinton appears to have taken some voice training to improve her bland, monotone style, every time she opened her mouth it reminded me of her condescending line in the early 1990s about stay-at-home moms: “I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life.” Her rhetoric was full of the usual braggadocio; she managed to get both the words “proud” and “privileged” into her opening statement.

When asked how her presidency would be different than President Obama’s, she declared, “It’s pretty obvious, being the first woman president would be a pretty stark change.” This is quite a contrast from Republican presidential candidate Carly Fiorina, who has pointed out that being a woman is not an accomplishment. When asked why the Clinton dynasty should continue, Hillary said with a straight face, “the first woman president is an outsider” and went on to repeat her favorite line that she would fight for women and children.

Practically everything she said was duplicitous, trying to have it both ways. The most quoted example was: “I’m a progressive, not a moderate. But I’m a progressive who likes to get things done.”

What about her competitors? Sanders didn’t help himself sound any less scarily socialist. He praised socialist countries: “We should look to Denmark, Norway, Sweden and what they’ve accomplished for their people.” He declared that he didn’t consider himself a capitalist, and when asked what the greatest national security threat facing us today, responded, “climate change.” The audience roared. He said he wants to make every university free and raise the minimum wage to $15 an hour everywhere. He also trotted out the much discredited myth that people are locked up in prison merely for smoking marijuana, as did Clinton.

Jim Webb, who has a prestigious history of military service, came across as the most moderate of the bunch, and was attacked for not fully supporting affirmative action. O’Malley did little to distinguish himself from Clinton. All of the candidates, with the possible exception of Chafee, had little sympathy for NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and said he should be punished. The Planned Parenthood body parts selling scandal never even came up.

The candidates’ messages was one and the same: how to redistribute wealth, taking it away from the rich and setting up new government assistance programs to give it to the poor and middle class. The one thing the candidates did agree upon was that under Obama, the gap between the rich and the poor has increased, the middle class is disappearing and wages going down. And their non-message was also one and the same: There was a noticeable lack of patriotism or optimism about America.

With the other candidates unwilling to really challenge Clinton, it becomes less likely that Joe Biden will enter the race. If the other candidates had shown that they were strongly opposed to her candidacy and hammered her in the debate, or if she had imploded over Servergate, there would have been a natural void for him to enter and immediately become the frontrunner. Now, the Democratic race is up in the air, and Clinton again has a realistic chance at winning the nomination.