A man places signs supporting Hillary Clinton for the democratic presidential nominee outside the Gaillar Center prior to tonight’s Democratic debate on January 17, 2016 in Charleston, South Carolina. In this election so far, Clinton has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from employees of the big banks.
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“I’m going to defend Dodd-Frank and I’m going to defend President Obama”, Clinton said.
The pair, along with former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, took the stage in Charleston, South Carolina as frontrunner Clinton feels the heat from challenger Sanders in a tightening nomination race. On the eve of Sunday’s debate, Sanders said he would support a bill introduced by Sen.
“To tear it up and start over again, pushing our country back into that kind of a contentious debate, I think is the wrong direction”, she said.
“When this campaign began, she was 50 points ahead of me”, Sanders said.
The gun debate may have special resonance in Charleston following the outpouring of grief triggered when a self-proclaimed white supremacist killed nine African-Americans at a Bible study meeting at the city’s Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church a year ago. Foreign policy also could play a role in the debate, which follows Saturday’s prisoner deal announced by the United States and Iran. Gun control has emerged as a central theme in the race, with Clinton citing the issue as one of the major differences between the candidates. As she listed Sanders’ past votes and jabbed at him over the immunity issues, Sanders sighed a couple times in frustration and shook his head. But last year’s scandal about her use of private email while secretary of state has lingered, and her favourability ratings are lower than those of Sanders. “That is one of the greatest accomplishments of President Obama, the Democratic Party and our country”, Clinton said.
And Clinton wryly congratulated Sanders for flip-flopping on a proposal she has advanced to end gun makers’ immunity from lawsuits.
Another flashpoint between Sanders and Clinton was on health care.
“When the African-American community becomes familiar with my Congressional record and with our agenda and with our views on the economy and criminal justice just as the general population has become more supportive so will the African-American community, so will the Latino community”, Sanders said.
Bernie Sanders won Sunday night’s debate. “Senator Sanders has been changing a lot of positions in the last 24 hours because when his plans and record come under scrutiny, their very real flaws get exposed”, Clinton said in a statement responding to the plan. While he is often likened to losing Democratic candidates of the past, like Bill Bradley and Howard Dean, Sanders has a much more radical vision than either of them.
Sanders said any death in police custody should automatically trigger a federal investigation.
The two tangled over financial policy, too, with Sanders suggesting Clinton won’t be tough enough on Wall Street given the big contributions and speaking fees she’s accepted from the financial sector.
Clinton has assailed Sanders for peddling a federally administered national single-payer system that would prove too costly, and on Sunday she launched new criticism, saying Sanders’s plan would shred President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act, which has helped 19 million new people get health insurance. By going hard on the offensive now, Hillary Clinton and her campaign risk looking overly negative: an image that hurt her at times in her 2008 race against Obama and that turns off many Democratic voters when the attacks are aimed at another Democrat. But the status quo is unpopular; it’s not an easy sell to ask Americans to look at the Middle East and conclude “let’s do more of what we’re doing now”. “No, I don’t think we should”, he said.
Clinton stated she would lean on her husband and ask for his ideas and advice in the White House.
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“It just makes sense to highlight where you agree with a president who is popular among caucus goers, and Secretary Clinton found ways to get that done”, said Brent Colburn, a former Obama administration official who served as communications director for his 2012 campaign.
