It was the Democrats’ turn to debate Tuesday, with five of the presidential candidates taking the stage in Las Vegas. “I’m a progressive”, she said.
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“Let me say something that may not be great politics, but I think the Secretary is right and that the American people are sick and exhausted of hearing about your damn emails!”
“Thank you Bernie”, said Clinton, as the two shook hands – a moment that immediately ricocheted across the Internet.
“Credibility is an issue out there with the world and we have fix work to be done”. And with today’s Democratic party, that is no small feat.
“That’s obviously very popular with this crowd”, Cooper said over the applause and cheers, “but Gov. Chafee you said something different on the campaign trail”.
Clinton has come under pressure since announcing her White House bid to explain what critics have billed flip-flops, and she has consistently maintained that her views always evolved after learning more about a given issue.
Martin O’Malley, former Virginia Sen. He said the issue isn’t so much about gun laws but the shortage of mental health services for people who use a gun, without elaborating.
Sanders took a veiled swipe at Clinton by calling the Iraq war, “the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country”. Liberals in the Democratic party are strongly opposed to both.
There were a few fiery moments too, with Clinton accusing Sanders – her chief rival – of being soft on gun control.
“No. Not at all”, Clinton responded when asked whether Sanders has been tough enough on guns. She reiterates the historical nature of her candidacy: “I can’t think of anything more outsider than being the first woman president”, and says “I’m certainly not campaigning to be president because my last name is Clinton”.
Earlier in the debate, Clinton said that the US needs to stands up to what she described as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s bullying.
On her recent about face on the Trans-Pacific Partnership– she came out against it last week after having referred to it as the “gold standard” of trade deals as secretary state — Clinton said she had “hoped it would be the gold standard”, and only recently decided that it in fact, was not. He mentioned billionaires more times than Jim Webb (whoever he is) complained about his lack of time.
Democratic candidates have tiptoed around Hillary Clinton for months as they tried to make their own cases to the party’s base.
Clinton took a veiled shot at Biden by emphasizing her involvement in President Barack Obama’s decision to authorize the raid that killed former al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. And time for Joe Biden to enter the race is running out. On the record, Clinton’s senior advisers repeated a more measured version of what James Carville told me the night before the debate when I asked about Biden: “It’s time to shit or get off the pot”. The real estate mogul still made his presence known Tuesday night, sending a torrent of Twitter commentary on the Democrats’ performances.
While the Republican primary has been roiled by the emotional debate over immigration, the Democratic candidates were largely united in their call for providing a path to legal status for the millions of people now in the USA illegally. She defended the Russian reset on the grounds Vladimir Putin was not in the presidency, a weak argument to put it mildly. There’s also her record, on foreign policy in particular, which even the Democrats criticize. The email issue has shadowed her rollout of numerous policy positions and has hurt her standing with voters. Later this month, she’s scheduled to testify before the House committee investigating the deadly 2012 attacks on the American mission in Benghazi, an appearance that will be fraught with partisan fire. Webb, with a sly smile, says the Vietnam soldier who threw a grenade who injured him, but “he’s not around anymore”.
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“The scientific community is telling us that if we do not address the global crisis of climate change-transform our energy system away from fossil fuel to sustainable energy-the planet that we’re going to be leaving our kids and our grandchildren may well not be habitable”, he said. It was clear from the outset that she was easily the most practiced and capable debater on the stage, which makes sense given that she’s done this about 300 times.
