Hillary Clinton was once considered a slam dunk as the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate.
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Host Andrea Mitchell turned to Dean for his take on MSNBC’s Democratic presidential debate the previous evening.
MITCHELL: Well, we’re talking about it because Bernie Sanders has made it a campaign issue and she is – he is her only opponent.
Clinton aides argue that the heavily white and liberal electorates of New Hampshire and Iowa, where Clinton barely eked out a win, make them outliers in the Democratic primary race. “We have to look at the threats we face right now”.
“I am not going to stop fighting for New Hampshire”, Clinton said Friday. In the time that was lost, several of the younger Sanders supporters had to leave, allowing Clinton to have a viable vote when she might not have otherwise.
But the polls indicated that billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump still held a substantial lead over a large field of Republican rivals, while Bernie Sanders, the democratic socialist senator from the neighboring state of Vermont, maintained a large lead over former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Sanders headed to New York City for a cameo appearance on NBC’s “Saturday Night Live”, appearing with comedian Larry David, who has portrayed Sanders as an impassioned underdog shouting for revolution.
It was conducted from Tuesday through Thursday among 1 125 registered voters, with a margin of error of 2.9 percentage points.
Both candidates will continue campaigning in New Hampshire over the weekend.
“Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good”, Sanders said, imitating a line from David’s HBO series “Curb Your Enthusiasm”. Clinton and her aides have tried to lower expectations in New Hampshire – something Clinton did against on Friday – while also pledging to fight in the state. “I think it’s important that those of you who are trying to make this decision by Tuesday really look at whether the numbers add up because, you know, it matters”, she said.
Her first question came from a young man who asked about how she responds to people who distrust her in light of controversies over the Benghazi attacks and her use of a private email server at the State Department.
“What being part of the establishment is, is in the last quarter, having a super PAC that raised $15 million from Wall Street, that throughout one’s life raised a whole lot of money from the drug companies and other special interests”, Sanders commented, to Clinton’s objections. “I think there’s a whole side of her we don’t know”.
Clinton said the “fog of war” was to blame for the confusion in the days after the attack.
But nearly instantaneously, his campaign blasted out a “fact check” to the news media that included an excerpt from Senator Elizabeth Warren’s 2003 book, “The Two-Income Trap”, in which she accused Mrs. Clinton of shifting her position on bankruptcy legislation when she became a NY senator to appease her Wall Street donors, a charge Mrs. Clinton has denied. “Senator Sanders and I share some very big progressive goals”, the former first lady said. She said last night she didn’t – or she said in the debate, she didn’t realize that she was going to be running for president. She said Sander’s college plan would cost $750 billion.
They like his critique of what he calls a rigged economy, his castigation of Wall Street, his demand that the rich contribute more in taxes, his insistence that the middle and working classes get more by way of government help and support.
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Mr Sanders hit back by insisting that billionaires undermine democracy in the USA by spending unlimited funds on election campaigns. “This debate is an opportunity to elevate the very serious issues facing the residents of Flint, and it’s also an opportunity to remind voters what Democratic leadership can do for the economy – so that everyone in America has a fair shot”. That’s particularly true since Clinton will benefit from the efforts of the formidable political machine of Jeanne and Billy Shaheen.
