Bernie Sanders, left, offers an apology to Hillary Clinton during a Democratic presidential primary debate Saturday, Dec. 19, 2015, at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. A more honest line of attack might be that Sanders has yet to spell out how he would pay for universal health care – or, for that matter, get it through a hostile Congress. “I guarantee you there will be plenty of negative advertising that will redefine Bernie Sanders”.
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Clinton and her team have stepped up their criticism of Sanders on a variety of fronts in recent days as polls have begun to show him edging even with her in Iowa – and, for the first time, looking competitive in a national poll.
In a CNN clip re-posted Wednesday by the Sanders campaign, a 2008-era Clinton rips into the president-to-be with an indignation not yet seen in Clinton ’16.
“One can only draw the conclusion that the Sanders campaign does not want to outline what would amount to a massive tax hike on working families”, said Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s senior policy adviser.
Sanders campaign manager Jeff Weaver said in an interview that the ad is not an attack.
Clinton is leaning hard on an experience-above-all-else argument, sarcastically reminding people that as a former first lady and secretary of state, she wouldn’t need a tour of the White House if elected president.
At Dartmouth, Sanders addressed the ad, “This is not a negative ad everybody knows there are two divisions there is a division of the Democratic Party there is a division between those people who fought to deregulate Wall Street were very tight with Wall Street and those of us who fought against that deregulation”.
“This ad does something that Bernie said he wouldn’t do”, campaign pollster Joel Benenson added, referring to how the Vermont Senator has said he will not run negative campaign ads.
At least three major polls conducted this year in Iowa, including a Quinnipiac University poll released last week, show Sanders ahead by as much as 5 points.
The Democratic race has increased in intensity.
With many Americans “feeling the Bern”, as the Sanders campaign likes to say of his supporters, NBC asked Clinton point blank if she was nervous.
Sanders has vowed to break up large Wall Street banks that were bailed out during the financial downturn in late 2008 and 2009 and suggested that Clinton would be more lenient in how she would address the financial industry. With this just occurring, the effects it could have in the Iowa caucus are significant.
The Clinton campaign held an abruptly scheduled conference call with reporters Thursday afternoon to respond to the ad.
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“What Senator Sanders has said, and it’s his flawless right to say it, he wants a national health care single payer system”. If you would like to discuss another topic, look for a relevant article.
