A surprise: Sanders declined to score political points, backing Clinton over the email issue. “The American people are sick and exhausted of hearing about your damn emails”. It’s the one issue where Clinton has consistently been to Sanders’ left and he seemed ill-equipped to cope with her frontal attack. “I’m not sure he showed why he’s electable”, CNN chief political analyst Gloria Borger said.
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“Nobody does, Senator Sanders”, Clinton interjected.
Three other candidates – former Rhode Island Gov. Lincoln Chafee, former Virginia Sen.
Vice President Joe Biden is still agonizing over whether to jump into the race even at this late stage and spent the weekend going over his options with his family in Delaware.
The self-defined “democratic socialist” did so again in Tuesday’s debate when asked by moderator Anderson Cooper if Americans would ever be willing to support a socialist for president.
No issue has dominated the opening months of the Democratic presidential campaign more than Clinton’s use of a private email sever during her time at the State Department. The email issue has shadowed her rollout of numerous policy positions and has hurt her standing with voters. “Clinton repeatedly suggested she would rather be “talking about the issues that matter to the American people” than her emails”. She highlighted comments from Republican Rep. Kevin McCarthy, who bragged about how a House committee investigating Clinton’s role in the deadly 2012 attacks in Benghazi, Libya, had hurt her politically.
The former secretary of state has also faced criticism that she’s shifted her positions on trade, gay marriage and other issues to match the mood of voters – a charge she denied Tuesday. “I’m a progressive who likes to get things done”.
Clinton effectively parlayed a question on how she had previously said the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a landmark trade deal opposed by labor unions, was a “gold standard” by saying that had merely been a hope that proved eventually unrealized once the deal was negotiated.
The USA presidential election is scheduled for November 8, 2016. Sanders said gun dealers in his state shouldn’t be held responsible if weapons they sell are used in violent incidents. He’s also calling for major reforms to the nation’s criminal justice system. “It wasn’t that complicated to me”, she said.
Sanders called the Iraq war “the worst foreign policy decision in the history of this country” and said it raised questions about Clinton’s judgment.
Sanders also knocked the administration of President Bill Clinton, the front-runner’s husband, for its deregulation of Wall Street in the 1990s.
But Sanders continues to lament Hillary Rodham Clinton’s support for the USA invasion of Iraq in 2003. When asked how her administration would differ from President Barack Obama’s, she said with a smile, “Being the first woman president would be quite a change”.
Clinton now says the deal doesn’t do enough to address currency manipulation. “We need to stand up and say enough of that”. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, speaks during a campaign rally in Springfield, Mass. Hillary Rodham Clinton says she always expected tough competition in the Dem… “So as I say, we’ve not yet signed off on it. But we are inclined to do so and we are for several reasons”. He cites the need to improve education and to include more people in the nation’s economic prosperity.
Sanders kickied off his first debate answer by listing a few of his favorite countries – Denmark, Sweden and Norway. Sticking with his progressive campaign message, Sanders is railing against a system in the United States that he says benefits the very wealthy.
Democratic candidates have tiptoed around Hillary Clinton for months as they tried to make their own cases to the party’s base.
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“But we are not Denmark. I love Denmark. We are the United States of America”, she proclaimed. We have massive wealth and income inequality.
