Saturday night’s Democratic debate opened with a moment of silence for the victims of the Paris terror attacks. The silence and the renewed awareness of the threat of violence gave the debate a decidedly different tenor than previous debates — but so did the focus on Sanders and Clinton, with Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee out and Martin O’Malley struggling to gain traction.

CBS decided to change the focus of the debate and devote more time to questions on national security and foreign policy, in light of the attacks. Each candidate opened with their thoughts on the attacks in Paris, with each of the candidates denouncing ISIS.

Fighting ISIS and Defending America

Bernie Sanders’ opening was the strangest, as he jumped straight from “this country will rid our planet” of ISIS to his stump speech on the “rigged economy” and a “corrupt campaign finance system.” What that has to do with the Vermont senator’s strategy for stopping terror attacks remains unclear.

Hillary Clinton gave a more coherent answer, telling Dickerson that “our prayers are with the people of France tonight, but that is not enough.”

“We need to have a resolve that will bring the world together to root out the kind of radical jihadist ideology that motivates organizations like ISIS…” Clinton said. She emphasized the importance of addressing terror “because all of the other issues we want to deal with depend upon us being secure and strong.”

Martin O’Malley said that this threat is “the new face of conflict and warfare in the 21st century,” and that this new challenge will require “fresh leadership.”

Each of the candidates was light on the details of what that might actually mean.

Clinton endorsed Obama’s stance of “supporting those who take the fight to ISIS” and said more than once that “this cannot be an American fight, although American leadership is essential.”

O’Malley “respectfully disagreed” with Secretary Clinton on the issue.

“This actually is America’s fight,” he said. “America is best when we are actually standing up to evil in this world. And ISIS, make no mistake about it, is an evil in this world.”

Dickerson kept things interesting by reminding Bernie Sanders how he claimed in the last debate that the greatest threat to national security was climate change. “Do you still believe that?”

In the face of global jihad, Sanders responds, “Absolutely. In fact, climate change is directly related to the growth of terrorism.”

We presume this would be news to the suicide bombers yelling “Allahu Akbar!” in the middle of a Parisian restaurant.

Sanders then went after Clinton for her vote on the Iraq War, saying it “led to the massive level of instability we are seeing right now.”

Clinton defended herself by giving a brief history lesson on the terrorist attacks against the United States from before the Iraq War. “I think if we’re ever going to really tackle the problems posed by jihadi extreme terrorism, we need to understand it and realize that it has antecedents to what happened in Iraq and we have to continue to be vigilant about it.”

Clinton was also the only candidate to bring up the current conflicts with Russia and China.

Wall Street and Campaign Finance

Where the candidates really went after each other was in domestic policy. Bernie Sanders took every opportunity to say that Hillary’s answers for the donations she’s received were “not good enough.”

“Let’s not be naïve about it,” he said. “Why over her political career has Wall Street been a major, the major campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? Now maybe they’re dumb and they’re don’t know what they’re going to get, but I don’t think so.”

Clinton was indignant that Sanders would try to “impugn my integrity.”

Her rejoinder: “Not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, for the first time a majority of my donors are women — 60 percent.”

O’Malley decided to pile on. “Bernie’s right,” he said, claiming that Clinton’s plan to break up the big banks is “weak tea” and that Glass-Steagall should be reinstated.

This Wasn’t the Revolution They Wanted

John Dickerson reminded Bernie Sanders what reality looks like. “You’ve said you’ll have a revolution. But there’s a conservative revolution going on in America right now … So how do you deal with that part of the country? The revolution’s already happening, but on the other side?”

It was a question Sanders was not prepared to answer.

“The problem is, that as a result of a corrupt campaign finance system, Congress is not listening to the American people. It’s listening to the big money interest.”

In contrast, Clinton sounded like a resigned realist at a few points. In a question on health care, she explained bluntly that “the revolution never came. I waited and I got the scars to show for it.”

But the most telling point of the domestic policy portion came when Clinton maneuvered from a question about the FBI investigation into her confidential email to explaining that differences among Democrats “pale in comparison” compared to differences with Republicans. “I mean, all of us support funding Planned Parenthood,” she said. “All of us believe climate change is real. All of us want equal pay for equal work. They don’t believe in any of that. So let’s focus on what this election is really going to be about.”