Wooing undecided Iowa voters, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders on Monday night each cast themselves as life-long champions for tackling economic inequality, but offered differing visions for addressing the nation’s problems.
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Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, polling a distant third place, was the candidate asked the most directly about race.
The comments, coming a week before the Iowa caucuses, were Obama’s most detailed yet on the unexpectedly tight contest to replace him.
White House officials say they have been working on arranging a one-on-one meeting between the men this week, although it isn’t certain it will come together. You know, she had to wke up earlier than I did because she had to get her hair done.
“[The] one thing everybody understands is that this job right here, you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing”, Obama said. But he said those would either be paid by Wall Street or offset by the elimination of insurance premiums.
“No, I don’t think that’s true”, he replied.
“I’m not willing to say it was an error in judgement, because nothing that I did was wrong”, Clinton said. “We need bold changes, we need a political revolution”, Sanders said.
Hillary Clinton faces a 16-point deficit to a challenger nearly universally liked by New Hampshire Democratic voters – from liberals to independents – while Republican Donald Trump has widened his big lead over rival Texas U.S. Sen. Mr Sanders has gone a step further, block-booking fleets of rental cars and buses as part of his “Go Home for Bernie” drive to persuade college students to leave campus for a day and travel to their homes to vote and organise others to vote, which may be in conservative-leaning counties where he has less of a natural advantage.
“Yes we will”, he said at a town hall in Des Moines, Iowa – the final time he’ll appear at the same event as Clinton before next Monday’s Iowa caucuses.
“It’s a great country and we all on the Democratic side are having a spirited debate about the issues we care about”, Clinton said, adding that Republicans have not done the same. Obama suggested he is a one-issue candidate, who will have to broaden his scope.
Clinton bills herself as the only candidate qualified to lock in progressive reforms ushered in by Obama and ready to be commander-in-chief in a unsafe world.
“You’re ashamed all the time”, said Carrie Aldrich, 46, who teared up as she told Sanders about living on less than $10,000 a year as she struggles with a disability. Long shot candidate Martin O’Malley will also be on stage Monday.
As per RealClearPolitics.Com, which monitors and aggregates all major polls, Clinton leads Sanders 52.0 per cent to 37.4 per cent. Over the weekend and yesterday, Clinton was ndorsed by two major newspapers Des Moines Register and Boston Globe.
O’Malley ended with a message to his supporters in Iowa: “Hold strong at your caucus”.
Though Clinton told Cuomo she should have addressed the situation “quicker”, she did not admit to making any mistakes in her handling of the controversy. Clinton quickly said the vote was a mistake but pivoted to how she and Obama had restored the trust and confidence of America’s allies and her own plan to defeat ISIS, which she did not explain.
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“The truth is in 2007 and 2008, sometimes my supporters and my staff, I think, got too huffy about what were legitimate questions she was raising”, Obama said in the Politico interview.
