Elizabeth Warren came into Wednesday night’s debate as the candidate to watch most closely, the only one of the 10 onstage who had double-digit support in polls, with an apparent momentum that none of those rivals could claim.

Her performance over two hours in Miami probably strengthened that position.

During the first hour, Warren was crisper than most of her peers. She was clearer. I didn’t always like what she said. But she said it well, leaving no doubt about the direction in which she’d pull the country and giving voters a fair amount of detail, within the crushing constraints of time, about the map that she’d use to travel there.

Warren left no doubt, too, about the great villains in American life, at least in her view: “giant corporations.” She said the phrase repeatedly, with force and derision, and she never strayed far from it, framing just about every ill in American life as something caused or exacerbated by greed.

She has bet her entire bid for the presidency on that argument’s resonance with American voters, and on Wednesday night she doubled, tripled and quadrupled down. Elizabeth Warren was unswervingly true to Elizabeth Warren, which is precisely why she has caught fire and why she’ll continue to burn relatively bright. Her passion and confidence should petrify Bernie Sanders, whose song she sings better than he does.

The two hours were alternately sizzling, sleepy, noisy and weirdly polite. They were frustrating: By dint of a draw that randomly scattered 20 Democrats across two consecutive nights, Warren was the only one onstage on the first night whose poll numbers place her among the top five overall. (She’s second or third, depending on the survey.) Both of the candidates with numbers as good or better than hers — Joe Biden and Sanders — will be onstage Thursday night, along with Kamala Harris and Pete Buttigieg, who round out the top five.

My guess is that Wednesday night’s event will have limited political consequence and that most of its participants won’t see a remarkable rise or dip in their fortunes. They simply couldn’t claim enough space in this thicket. They were trees that couldn’t be seen for the forest.

While many of them had moments — Tulsi Gabbard trumpeting her isolationism, John Delaney explaining and selling his centrism, Jay Inslee naming President Trump as the greatest threat to our national security — they were just that: moments. They flared suddenly and faded quickly, so that someone luminous in one 15-minute stretch went utterly dark in the next. Warren almost blinked out after the hour mark, but her strong opening lingered nonetheless, and she closed flawlessly.

Only a few candidates besides her probably did themselves real harm or good. Beto O’Rourke had an unequivocally bad night, all the more so because it played to existing concerns that he’s a lightweight.

In an exchange with Julian Castro over a section of text in immigration law, Castro came across as the one who felt the issue more deeply and had thought about it more exhaustively. Throughout the night, O’Rourke seemed less concerned with answering the questions put to him than with striking the poses he’d committed to beforehand.

He used his first minute to speak in Spanish, at surprising and showy length: Warren and Cory Booker looked visibly stunned and even a little disdainful. Much of what he said obviously came from memory instead of impulse, as if he didn’t want to let all his dutiful homework go to waste.

But then just about all of the candidates took moderators’ questions as mere suggestions, pivoting blithely to whatever topic they preferred to address. Each had decided on his or her brand and worked assiduously to burnish it.

Booker repeatedly reminded voters that he lives in Newark, with an awareness of African-Americans’ struggles that others on the stage might not have. Inslee, whose platform centers on climate change, managed to mention “wind turbines” in his first minute, though the question, about income inequality, most definitely didn’t tee up that reference.

But the annoying nature of that was redeemed somewhat by the inspirational diversity on the stage. There was a black man (Booker), a Latino man (Castro) and three women, one of whom, Amy Klobuchar, deftly drew attention to their presence with what was probably the night’s best line. After Inslee trumpeted that he had “advanced the ball” on reproductive freedom more than any of the others onstage, she interjected: “There are three women up here who have fought pretty hard for a woman’s right to choose.”

If O’Rourke was the candidate who most likely lost ground, Booker was the one who most likely gained it, in part because he was given more time than lower-polling candidates — Gabbard, Delaney and Bill de Blasio, for example — who were positioned at lecterns farther from the center of the stage. Booker also projected an ardor for the job of president that many of the others somehow didn’t.

Not that de Blasio wasn’t ardent. He was theatrically so, and he framed the discussion as “a battle for the heart and soul of this party,” positioning himself proudly in the progressive wing that Warren and Sanders inhabit. On Wednesday night that battle was waged most conspicuously in regard to health insurance and whether private plans should continue to exist, a question that split the field.

I said that Warren sings Sanders’s song, but that’s inaccurate: There are different notes, different keys. But she’s vying for voters who four years ago took a shine to him.

And like Sanders, she’s rolling out plans that serve more as windows into her values, or even utopian fantasies, than realistic possibilities in the near future. Even if a blue wave led not just to a Democratic president but also to Democratic control of both chambers of Congress, many Democrats in the House and Senate would be representing purple or even reddish states and districts that would most likely punish them if they drifted significantly to the left. So they won’t. And that’s an enormous obstacle to Warren’s agenda.

Like Sanders, she has welded herself to progressive ideals, such as an end to private insurance, that could be grave general-election liabilities. Like him, Warren divides the country neatly into villains and victims. Like him, she has sharp edges that she doesn’t worry about smoothing. And she clings to no word more tightly than “fight.” Warren got the last word on Wednesday night, and finished her remarks with this promise to struggling Americans: “I will fight for you as hard as I fight for my own family.”

But is there ample hope for healing in her message? Is it too potentially divisive, too morally stark? And is the best adversary for Trump a livid warrior or a happy one? Even as Warren impressed me, she left me with these questions. They’re big ones, because nothing matters more than limiting this president to one term by presenting him with the toughest foe.

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Frank Bruni has been with The Times since 1995 and held a variety of jobs — including White House reporter, Rome bureau chief and chief restaurant critic — before becoming a columnist in 2011. He is the author of three best-selling books.  @FrankBruni • Facebook

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