In the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, Bernie Sanders is surging.
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Trump appeared to reference Clinton’s comments about the president’s policies in a speech at Liberty University on Monday, saying the country can not afford another four years of the same thing. She highlighted his success in seizing Syria’s chemical weapons. “His lack of a strategy for defeating ISIS – one of the greatest challenges we face today – is troubling”. But it wouldn’t necessarily be disastrous for Clinton’s chances of winning the Democratic nomination – she’s stronger than she looks. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, for allegedly being insufficiently loyal to the president.
If you’re running in a Democratic primary in South Carolina, it’s probably a good idea to praise President Barack Obama, who has a 90 percent approval rating among South Carolina Democrats.
There was considerable irony in all of this. I can’t help but recall how Bill Clinton invited a backlash in 2008 by calling the Obama candidacy a “fairy tale”.
Sanders has closed the gap on her in Iowa, where voters caucus on February 1st, and leads her in second-to-vote New Hampshire, which holds its primary on February 9th. Her decision to play the continuity card, promising to build on the progressive foundation laid by Mr Obama, carries risks.
It was arguably Sanders biggest night as he managed to perform well in the debate, laying out his case and also managing to expose Hillary’s issues, The New Yorker reported. And he turned the tables, putting Clinton very much on the defensive when the subject turned to Wall Street excesses.
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 nation’s financial firms.
“Now what I have said is that I think the folks that have got to be on the ground are the people who are fighting for the soul of Islam”, Sanders said.
“She is trying to live within the realm of the possible and not become a fantasist the way that Bernie has”, said Matt Bennett, a Democratic consultant in Washington who worked on both Clintons’ campaigns. (Clinton countered with a pledge of “debt-free tuition” at public colleges.) All that free health care and higher education is going to cost a fortune. However, he was forced to concede that his plan to provide healthcare “for every man, woman and child as a right”, essentially by extending the existing Medicare and Medicaid federally funded insurance programmes for the retired and the poor, to all Americans, would necessitate small tax increases, an extremely tricky political proposition even if it’s true that eliminating private insurance premiums would more than offset them.
He called that type of economic system “corporatism”, where government runs the country. Others, however, say that beating the formidable Clinton operation in the first two contests could change the dynamic of the entire race. “We have already seen 19 million Americans get insurance”. “But all this does is open up for more attacks…the Clinton campaign thinks not only do they have an issue, they have a winning issue that they can really hammer home in Iowa”. “That’s what this debate should be about”.
Instead, we should start by looking at Sanders and his message. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Clinton would ordinarily have a huge advantage.
Presenting herself as his heir apparent, Clinton warned that Sanders’ universal health care plan threatened to reopen a contentious debate with Republicans that could undermine the so-called “Obamacare” law. In interviews afterward, several SC political veterans predicted that Clinton would win the primary here, perhaps comfortably.
He acknowledged that his plan would incur a tax on the average American, and Mrs Clinton pounced: “I want to raise incomes, not taxes”.
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Eugene Robinson is a syndicated columnist.
