Sanders’ campaign wanted one of the debates to be held in California and another in Brooklyn, New York, and questioned why Clinton, a former New York senator, might be reluctant to debate in her adopted home state. That means both Sanders and Clinton are likely to tailor their pitch beyond New Hampshire and toward the largely black Democratic electorate in SC, which votes February 27, and Georgia and other Southern states that hold their primaries on March 1. Yet she’s under increasing pressure to contrast Sanders’ calls for a political “revolution” with her more measured policy platform. Sanders appears to be leading in New Hampshire preference polls.
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Clinton, for her part, has signaled her determination at least to narrow the gap before Tuesday’s vote.
“I know where I stand, I know who stands with me, I know what I’ve done”, Clinton, a former secretary of state and USA senator, said at a town hall on Wednesday night where she andSanders spoke separately.
While there is not a super PAC exclusively created to support Sanders’s campaign for president like there is for Clinton, several outside groups have spent large sums of money in favor of the Vermont senator.
“I don’t think it’s appropriate that, you know, if Planned Parenthood endorses me or the Human Rights Campaign endorses me, you know, they’re thrown out of the progressive wing and put into the establishment”, said Clinton. Sanders countered that the ads didn’t say he’d been endorsed but merely passed along “nice” words the newspapers had written about him.
Clinton fired back, asking who made Sanders the “gatekeeper on who’s progressive”. He says it will take a “political revolution” to achieve goals such as universal health care, a fairer tax system and an incorruptible campaign finance system.
In an interview with CNN, Sanders also accused Clinton of being a progressive only “on some days”. Except when she announces that she is a proud moderate.
Clinton then took the opportunity to make a statement about why she is running.
It is also the first debate without former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, who suspended his campaign following a disappointing showing in Iowa. Sanders razor-thin loss in the Iowa caucuses Monday, and his formidable lead in New Hampshire polls, has heightened the possibility that the two remaining Democrats will be involved in a protracted fight for the nomination.
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On the Republican side, Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and John Kasich are trying to break out in New Hampshire by going after Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. Associated Press writer Scott Bauer contributed from Madison, Wisconsin.
