During a brief break from the campaign trail in Iowa, presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders is scheduled to meet President Barack Obama privately today in the Oval Office.
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“What the president has tried to do, what Vice President Biden has tried to do, is to be as evenhanded as they could be”, Sanders said outside the West Wing after the more than 45 minute meeting, reports The New York Times.
Clinton remains the front-runner in national polls and has a big lead among nonwhite voters – key parts of the Democratic electorate.
The comment is Clinton, in effect, challenging Sanders to debate between the Iowa caucuses on February 1 and the New Hampshire primary on February 9. I don’t think we do.
He quickly dismissed comparisons between Sanders’ surging campaign and his own in 2008 against Clinton: “I don’t think that’s true”. In response to Sanders’ criticism, the Clinton campaign pointed out that she also met with African-American ministers in the city, prior to her fundraiser.
Sanders said he did not ask the president for his endorsement. There have been predictions that, should he become the nominee, Republicans will dust off hammer and sickle imagery and raise fears of a socialist in the White House. “I don’t believe that at all”.
In a statement, White House press secretary Josh Earnest described the upcoming meeting as “informal”, saying Obama and Sanders discussed arranging the session during last month’s Congressional Holiday Ball.
Obama and his aides have regular contact with Clinton – his former secretary of state – and her staff, which includes former Obama White House staffers. But it comes amid a push by Sanders to make policing the financial sector central to his presidential campaign. But administration officials well know it will be seen as a pat on the back to Sanders after Obama put a finger on Clinton’s side of the scale.
“We have no plans to sanction any further debates before the upcoming first-in-the-nation caucuses and primary, but will reconvene with our campaigns after those two contests to review our schedule”, DNC Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz said in response to the proposed debate.
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Sanders, who’s made running a positive campaign a central message, left the door open to drawing a sharper contrast with Clinton in the final days before voting begins. “Both (former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley) and I have agreed and we’re waiting for the senator to decide to join us”.
