Jeff Greenfield is a five-time Emmy-winning network television analyst and author.

Its not hard to know what the fallout from this debate will be: Pete Buttigieg offered his strongest performance of his campaign, with a series of forceful, coherent arguments, and at least one contender for quote of the night. He drew the sharpest distinctions yet between himself and the rest of the still crowded field, and gave voters a preview of the fight he might bring to a one-on-one debate with Donald Trump.

His pushback at Rep. Tulsi Gabbards attack on what she labeled a bipartisan regime change foreign policy was the first sustained case any of the Democrats have offered in defense of an activist foreign policya case buttressed by Buttigiegs military service.

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The slaughter going on in Syria is not a consequence of American presence, he said, turning to Gabbard, who herself served in the Army. Its a consequence of a withdrawal and a betrayal by this president of American allies and American values. A small number of specialized, special operations forces and intelligence capabilities were the only thing that stood between that part of Syria and what we're seeing now, which is the beginning of a genocide and the resurgence of ISIS. Meanwhile, soldiers in the field are reporting that for the first time they feel ashamedashamed of what their country has done. When I was deployed, I knew one of the things keeping me safe was the flag on my shoulder represented a country that kept its word. You take that away, it takes away what makes America America.

In that single answer, Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, folded in a defense of Americas international role with a concise assault on Trumps invitation for Turkey to invade Syria. It was one of several instances in which Buttigieg, lurking in the polls just below former Vice President Joe Biden and Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, made his strongest argument as a moderate alternative to front-running Biden, who, while avoiding the rhetorical stumbles of past debates, seemed to fade into the scenery as the night went on.

Buttigieg, displaying a passion that many said was conspicuously lacking in his earlier appearances, punched up on the subject of the candidates competing heath care plans. When Elizabeth Warren once again promised that costs will go down for most Americans under her no private insurance idea, Buttigieg staked out an alternative that went to the heart of the political danger of a single-payer plan. He noted that Warren, unlike Bernie Sanders, repeatedly refused to acknowledge the fact that taxes will go up for the middle class, which they argued would be more than eased by an overall lowering of costs.

A yes or no question that didn't get a yes or no answer, Buttigieg chided. This is why people are so frustrated. Your signature is to have a plan for everything, except this. No plan has been laid out to explain how a multi-trillion-dollar hole in this plan that Senator Warren is putting forward is supposed to get filled in. We can move forward with the biggest transformation since Medicare. The way to do it without a giant multi-trillion-dollar hole and avoiding a yes or no question is Medicare for all who want it.

And in what is sure to be among the most featured moments of the night, Buttigieg displayed a bit of temper in an exchange with former Congressman Beto ORourkes proposal for a mandatory buyback of assault weapons.

The problem isnt the polls, the problem is the policy, Buttigieg said. I don't need lessons from you on couragepersonal or political. The problem is not other Democrats who dont agree with your particular idea of how to handle this. The problem is the National Rifle Association and their enablers in Congress and we should be united in taking the fight to them.

What we owe to those survivors is a solution. We are at the cusp of building a new American majority to actually do things that congressmen and senators have been talking about with almost no impact for my entire adult life. This is really important, OK? On guns we are this close to an assault weapons ban. And we're going to get wrapped around the axle whether it's Hell, yes, were going to take your guns?

If Im right, Buttigieg will get the lions share of the Who won? judgments, with Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar earning high marks as the moderate voice of reason, and Sanders demonstrating no ill effects from his recent heart attack.

But this raises a more fundamental question: Will Buttigiegs performance matter in the only way that really mattersa bump in the polls?

We have had one example of a much-heralded debate performance whose half-life proved nonexistent. Kamala Harris critique of Joe Bidens record on busing was the featured moment of the first debate. Her rise in the polls was followed by a steady return to single digits. Why? Perhaps it was her failure to explain exactly what her health care plan was; or that the distance between her and Biden on busing was shorter than first appeared; or that, in general the rationale for her campaign was less clear than those of her rivals. Whatever the cause, her one debate moment proved far too fragile to sustain a rise in support.

Less obvious, but equally significant, was Joe Bidens continued presence at or near the top of the pack, despite three debates in which he was heard wandering through a confusing rhetorical landscape of incomplete sentences, odd allusions and garbled statistics. His decades of experience, his ties to the still-wildly popular Barack Obama, his strength among African-American politicians and voters, has thus far mattered more than his unsteady debate performances. And if youre looking for a debate moment to account for Warrens steady rise in the polls, you wont find one. Instead, her overall debate presence has been characterized by a no drama offering of policies wrapped neatly around her strivers biography and stories she has gathered from people shes met on the trail.

For those of us whose professional lives revolve around politicswho only checked on the Washington-St. Louis game during commercial breaksdebates are often seen as high political drama, with enormous stakes. Every debate is viewed through the prism of the clashes leading up to a general election, even though we are 3 months away from the first primary vote. And voters know this, which is why every survey shows a thumping majority of them say they either have no favorite or could change their minds.

If these debates matter as much as the coverage suggests they do, we should see some measurable movement in the polls. But even if we do, the more significant question is: Will that movement be sustained? Or are there other factors that will make the sound and fury of these debates underwhelming in the end?

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Will Mayor Petes Breakout Performance Actually Move His Poll Numbers? - POLITICO