The New Hampshire debate is being held just five days before Tuesday’s first-in-the-nation primary. While the former secretary of State has accepted millions of dollars from Wall Street firms and other special interests, the Vermont senator has built his war chest from over three million individual contributers, who have donated an average of $27.
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Clinton called that an “artful smear” and said she had never changed a view or a vote because of her donations.
Sanders, for his part, suggested Clinton’s loyalties were colored by a reliance on big corporate donors.
“This is an emergency”, said Clinton, who will visit the city Sunday.
Clinton called Sanders’ sweeping proposals on health care and education “just not achievable”.
“You know, Senator Sanders has said he wants to run a positive campaign”. They both agree on the need for universal health care, but “the disagreement is where do we start from and where do we end up”.
Facing New Hampshire voters makes candidates better, and prepares them more for the Oval Office than the made-for-TV campaign stops that will dominate the summer.
While still refusing to explicitly accuse Clinton of being corrupted, Sanders’s appeared to be arguing, at the very least, that her participation in the corrupt campaign finance system helped to perpetuate its existence.
At the Democratic presidential debate in New Hampshire Thursday, Sanders is stressing that he has always caucused with Democrats in the Senate. Bernie Sanders, brought in more campaign cash last month than she did.
Bernie Sanders answers a question from the audience while taking part in a CNN Democratic Town Hall moderated by American journalist and CNN anchor Anderson Cooper in Derry, New Hampshire February 3, 2016.
The close result in Iowa was the latest twist in an election campaign that, until recently, had been dominated by the crowded and cacophonous field of Republicans, who spread out across New Hampshire this week.
After Sanders said Clinton represents the establishment, Clinton responded, “Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment”.
“Sanders says his goal would be keeping the US from getting “sucked into never-ending perpetual warfare within the quagmire of Syria and Iraq”.
The former first lady has sought to manage expectations about her performance in the New Hampshire primary, saying she’s disadvantaged by Sanders being from a neighboring state.
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“So far in New Hampshire, it’s all Sanders as Clinton faces an uphill fight”, said pollster Lee Miringoff, director of the Marist College Institute for Public Opinion. U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who won the Iowa Republican Caucus, came in third with 12 percent.
