In a marked shift from the violent rhetoric between the two campaigns in the past 24 hours, at the start of Saturday’s Democratic debate at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire, Bernie Sanders publicly apologized to Hillary Clinton for a staff member’s decision to view private Clinton-campaign data.

“I apologize,” Sanders said, as the Democratic crowd roared and applauded. “Not only do I apologize to Secretary Clinton — and I hope we can work together on an independent investigation from Day One — I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the type of campaign that I run.”

The Democratic frontrunner magnanimously accepted his apology — even though her campaign had fired barb after barb at Sanders over the issue. “I very much appreciate that comment, Bernie,” she said. “It really is important that we go forward on this.”

It was an anticlimactic moment after two days of simmering tension between the campaigns and between the establishment and progressive wings of the Democratic party. On Thursday, the Democratic National Committee found that at least one Sanders staffer had exploited a momentary breach in its third-party vendor’s network to view the Clinton campaign’s private voter data. In response, the DNC shut the Sanders campaign out of all Democratic voter data, including the Sanders campaign’s own voter rolls.

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That touched off a vicious intraparty struggle, with the Sanders campaign accusing the DNC of “sabotage” and of carrying water for the Clinton campaign. Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook called the Sanders campaign’s action a deliberate “act of theft.” The DNC ultimately backed down and returned the data late Friday night, after the Sanders campaign filed a lawsuit. But surrogates from both campaigns took to the airwaves Saturday, where they continued to trash each other.

#share#Though still apologetic, Sanders called the DNC’s decision to cut him off from his data “an egregious act.” And he expressed frustration with the Clinton campaign’s aggression on the issue.

“When we saw [an initial] breach two months ago, we didn’t go running to the media to make a big deal about it,” he said. “And it bothers me very much that, rather than working on this issue to resolve it, it has become many press releases from the Clinton campaign.”

Still, both candidates seemed determined to bury the hatchet, agreeing that with an independent inquiry underway they can now “move on.”

Sanders’s decision to apologize, and his refusal to accuse the DNC of carrying water for the Clinton campaign, is reminiscent of his performance the first Democratic debate in October. Rather than attack the former secretary of state for her use of a private e-mail server, Sanders seemed to give Clinton an out on the issue. “The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn e-mails!” he said at the time.

– Brendan Bordelon is a political reporter for National Review Online.