Thursday’s debate offered the second chance for Sanders and Clinton to publicly trade barbs after the Vermont senator narrowly lost the Iowa caucuses Monday.
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The face-to-face meeting between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders is rooted in an intensifying debate over who understands the great divide between rich Americans and everyone else. The news wouldn’t be announced until February 3, after the Sanders and Clinton campaigns had hashed out agreements for future debates, but behind the scenes the DNC’s logo was already being etched into glass for the debate stage backdrop.
A fiery Clinton went after Sanders for his suggestions that she is a captive of Wall Street interests, calling on him to end a “very artful smear that you and your campaign are carrying out”. Clinton said she would gladly agree to participate in an audit should it be necessary.
Clinton also raised $5m for the Democratic National Committee and state parties, her campaign said.
The Democratic candidates for president gathered in New Hampshire Thursday for their fifth debate, and CNN’s Reality Check team spent the night putting their statements and assertions to the test.
Sanders, favored in New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary, said Wednesday that Clinton’s record is “just not progressive” on any number of issues, including her vote as a senator to authorize the war in Iraq.
Clinton and her campaign fired back aggressively Tuesday. “Now, it is Wall Street’s time to help the middle class”, he said.
Clinton cancelled two fundraisers in the past week hosted by people in the financial sector, but Mook said that was not an effort to deflect criticism of her ties to the industry.
Clinton disputed the establishment label, saying it was “quite amusing” to accuse “a woman, running to be the first woman president, as the establishment”.
“But experience is not the only point, judgment is”, he said, noting as he often has during the campaign that Clinton voted to support the invasion of Iraq – and he did not.
Mr Sanders, for his part, suggested Mrs Clinton’s loyalties were coloured by a reliance on big corporate donors. Overall, just 19% of likely Democratic voters said they would never back Clinton, 8% would never back Sanders, and 52% say both candidates are OK. Clinton, unwilling to cede the issue to Sanders, insisted her regulatory policies would be tougher on Wall Street than his. GOP candidates, who debate again Saturday, were all over New Hampshire ahead of the primary.
NBC’s Chuck Todd questioned Sanders on his foreign policy, charging the Vermont senator with not laying out a foreign policy strategy or naming his foreign policy advisers. “So, I think that I am the person who can do all aspects of the job”.
She addressed Sanders’ campaign promise to provide universal health care for all and free college tuition.
Sanders, who has served in Washington for decades, sought to paint Clinton as part of the “establishment” after she noted that she was proud to have the support of several officials from his home state, including the current governor and former Gov. Howard Dean, who she said “want me as their partner in the White House”. Asked whether she would release the transcripts of those speeches she said she was “willing to look into it” but didn’t commit to doing so.
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Clinton retorted: “A vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS”.
