Las Vegas

Bernie Sanders has a long way to go yet before he locks up the Democratic nomination. He fell short of expectations in both Iowa and New Hampshire, winning both by the thinnest of margins. (And Pete Buttigieg may yet emerge with more delegates from those first two contests.) His victory in Nevada was a knockout, but the South Carolina and Super Tuesday contests could still revive Joe Biden’s fortunes or show that Elizabeth Warren didn’t really abort Bloomberg’s campaign by humiliating him in last week’s debate. Squint and you can still just about see a way for somebody else to win the nomination and take on Trump in November, maybe after a contested convention where enough moderates pool their delegates to deny Bernie the prize.

The sub-tweeters and thumb-twitchers are writing Michael Bloomberg’s political obituary after his admittedly less than thrilling turn in Las Vegas, but the pundits were always coming not to praise him, but to bury him. Who does this rich amateur think he is? What year does this out-of-touch oligarch think we’re in, 2016?The elites of the Democratic party and their baggage train in the media have, like an earlier elite in search of a restoration, learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. They remember only the humiliation of Trump’s victory in 2016. They refuse to consider the reasons for their repudiation by the voters, or the arrogance that led Hillary Clinton and her team to assume that the Blue Wall was theirs by hereditary right.

Five chancers are rolling into Las Vegas tonight with one objective: to rob the ninth richest man in the world blind. Despite (we think) winning the first two primaries, Bernie Sanders is not the biggest target ahead of the ninth Democratic debate in the theater of the Paris casino. No, that honor falls to former New York mayor and current shortest candidate Michael Bloomberg, who takes the stage for the first time tonight after buying his way into contention. His quintet of opponents will each deploy a different approach in trying to sweep his little legs from under him. Let's call them Ocean's Five. There's Bernie, the old hand, who's been railing against billionaires for yonks and now has the perfect foil.

President Donald J Trump, the man who never sleeps, hasn't woken up to the awful news from Las Vegas. Or at least he hasn't yet gone on to Twitter to rave at the world, as he normally does after any terrorist attack or incident of mass violence. No doubt he will any moment. Until he does, the media will have to content itself with publishing distressing images and videos of the shooting and reporting what few facts we know. There isn't anything else to say. It is worth noting, however, that Trump supporters have taken to pointing out that, while there have been around 40 terrorist attacks in Europe in 2017, in America there have been none -- not one terrorist atrocity since the 45th president was inaugurated.