Sometimes, the fights politicians chose to skip reveal as much about them as the ones they decide to wage.
Advertisement
According to Clinton, it is best not to respond “to this sort of bigotry”.
A day earlier, Sanders had sued his own Democratic party for blocking his campaign from accessing its digital database considered essential to run his electioneering. “Yes, I apologize”, he said.
Sanders’ campaign fired a worker involved in the data breach, and campaign manager Jeff Weaver admitted that the worker’s actions were “unacceptable”.
Hillary Clinton said she accepts an apology from Sanders for the actions of his staff in a data breach, urging voters and the media to “move on”. He, however, again blamed the data breach on a DNC vendor that “screwed up” and took issue with the Clinton campaign for highlighting the incident in press releases. This is a result, he said, of “flip-flopping” by Sanders and Clinton.
“You have to look at both the terrorism challenge that we face overseas and certainly at home, and the role that guns play in delivering the violence that stalks us”, Clinton said.
Sign up for CNN Politics’ Nightcap newsletter, serving up today’s best and tomorrow’s essentials in politics. On stage these candidates want to reserve their fire for the Republicans.
O’Malley attacked both, saying: “Secretary Clinton changes her position on this every election year, it seems”. That’s why they turned their attention to the Republican frontrunner Donald Trump.
The candidates blasted Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump’s comments regarding Muslims.
She added that GOP positions, which have included a call by Trump to bar Muslim immigrants from entering the United States in the wake of terror attacks in Paris and California, were fanning “the flames of radicalization”. Of course, Clinton said, in foreign interventions there always are.
Strategically important information on voters is contained in the database, which campaigns use to decide strategy.
For the Americans not on the road ahead of the holidays or watching NFL football, Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley provided the entertainment, engaging in a substantive if somewhat dry policy forum.
The former first lady, however, stressed that most of her campaign contributions are from small donors.
She pledged not to raise taxes for middle-class families and said such a tax “should not be part of anybody’s plan right now”.
Sanders said he had lost an election in Vermont for a gun-control stance and Clinton said she had backed gun-control measures. “We have a strategy and a commitment to go after ISIS, which is a danger to us as well as the region and we finally have a UN Security Council resolution bringing the world together to go after a political transition in Syria”.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont), meanwhile, began his response to the question by complimenting Clinton on her tenure as first lady. Clinton equivocated too: “It’s wrong policy for us to be even imagining we’re going to put up… tens of thousands of American troops… we do have to form a coalition”. He supports government-funded health care while she supports minor reforms to the Affordable Care Act; she is too quick to embrace “regime change” while he voted against the Iraq War in 2002; and, mostly, she is too cozy with Wall Street.
Advertisement
During the debate, Clinton even praised former president George W Bush, saying he reached out to Muslim Americans and told them that “you are our partner”.
