On the same day, a few miles away, supporters of Clinton’s main Democratic rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, rallied at a skate park in downtown Bridgeport. Sanders is on the list of the most notable quotes of 2015, as compiled by a Yale Law School librarian.
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No one is anxious about that anymore.
Gilda Cobb Hunter, a SC legislator who’s a member of the Democratic National Committee, said she expected Clinton to win SC but that Sanders had quietly made inroads in the state with liberal and labor groups. Jimmy Fallon asked presidential candidate Hillary Clinton when she appeared on his show Thursday night (Jan. 14) and submitted herself to a formal job interview by the Tonight Show host.
But neither Clinton nor her campaign aides, however, ever expressly promised not to go negative in the Democratic race. “But it’s a real race”.
Not only does that state hold the first contest for them, but Clinton and Sanders are running neck-and-neck in both Iowa and New Hampshire, while she has held a commanding lead in S.C. polls.
The next face-off for Dems is February 11 in Milwaukee, hosted by PBS – just two days after the New Hampshire primary.
The Clinton campaign, despite being able to work with Brock, publicly rejected his plan to demand Sanders’ records.
In New Hampshire, there have been five polls done since the first of the year. Her once-comfortable lead over Sanders in Iowa is now just four points, pretty much a toss-up.
The new approach carries risks.
And Clinton used the bulk of her stump speech Tuesday in Iowa to contrast herself with Sanders, knocking him on guns, taxes and health care.
In the past week, Clinton has characterized Sanders as standing against her and President Obama on gun control, and attacked Sanders’ call for single-payer health care as an idea that would “end all the kinds of health care we know”.
The three candidates have sparred in past debates, but with the temperature rising and candidates launching full-frontal attacks against each other regularly on the campaign trail, Sunday night’s contest will likely have a sharper tone. We can’t afford to let them outwork us.
“When it really mattered, Senator Sanders voted with the gun lobby and I voted against the gun lobby”, Clinton said last week, referring to Sanders’ vote in favor of a 2005 law that protected gun manufacturers from legal liability.
Sunday’s debate will take place directly across Calhoun Street from the Emanuel AME Church, site of last June’s shooting – one of several mass shootings that has kept the issue of gun control on voters’ minds.
But in a campaign that has seen billionaire Donald Trump rise to the top of the Republican presidential field by capitalizing on an electorate angry with the political establishment, Clinton may once again be embracing the mantle of experience at a time when outsider status is in vogue. “We’re not charging you $2700 to be here; it’s free”, she said. That could clear the way for Clinton’s team to retaliate with its own critical advertising. It must be kept in mind that SC holds the first-in-the-South Democratic primary on Saturday, Feb. 27.
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When the Democratic presidential candidates debate here Sunday, their immediate goal will be to shore up their support in Iowa and New Hampshire, where Democrats vote early next month in close races. “There will be a lot of handwringing”, Mellman said.
