A bitter debate among the last-chance candidates augurs ill for the Democrats

With Sanders storming ahead as the likely nominee, debate descends into a fight for the moral high ground, writes Andrew Naughtie

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Pete Buttigieg, formerly the candidate of youthful optimism, had turned pessimistic by the start of last night’s debate.

“I am not looking forward,” he declared, “to a scenario where it comes down to Donald Trump, with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s, and Bernie Sanders, with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.”