Bernie Sanders won Saturday in Nebraska and Kansas in the Democratic race, while front-runner Hillary Clinton took Louisiana, another divided verdict from the American people.
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It was a marked change in tone for the two Democrats, signaling Sanders’ increasingly hard effort to slow the Democratic front-runner.
Don Lemon, anchor of “CNN Tonight with Don Lemon”, asked both candidates about the growing racial issue facing America.
But Sanders pounced, calling her out on having an inauthentic change of heart on one of his most passionate issues.
“Let me tell my story, you tell yours”, Sanders shot back at another. “I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being”, he said, mentioning the impact the Holocaust had on his father’s family.
What had been a cordial, if not chummy, relationship between the two Democratic rivals devolved into a heated spat.
“We must focus on what should be done for people of Flint”, Clinton said, reminding the audience it was her idea to hold a debate in Flint. Clinton voted in favor of the bailout.
As she called on her supporters to vote for her, she added this plea: “The sooner I could become your nominee, the more I could begin to turn our attention to the Republicans”. “If everybody had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed”. Sanders, who opposed the Wall Street bailout, voted with Vitter’s side to block the money. All Republican contenders have strongly defended fracking, leading Louis Finkel of the American Petroleum Institute to attack Clinton’s position as “a political stunt by those who are spouting populist rhetoric for political points”. The bailout of the US auto industry by Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama remains popular in MI, the home of the USA auto industry, and has been credited with preserving the Midwest’s manufacturing base. Its 147 pledged delegates will be up for grabs on Tuesday, where polls show it’s the former secretary of state who has an edge over the Vermont senator. She promised to release transcripts of her private remarks only if all her opponents – Democratic and Republican – did the same.
The majority of Democratic voters say they want a political insider as president to tackle the biggest issues facing the nation. “Here it is. There ain’t nothin'”.
“Did I vote against the Wall Street bailout?” he asked. Clinton responded that Sanders chose purity over the public good.
An emotional Sanders said he felt “literally shattered” by the toxic tap water in Flint and renewed his call for Gov. Rick Snyder to resign.
Snyder has said he has no plans to step down.
Specifically, Clinton said that she would not support fracking when local communities don’t want it; when it causes pollution; and when fracking companies don’t disclose the chemicals they use.
To flip the trajectory of the race, Sanders badly needs to pull an upset in Tuesday’s primary in MI. Turnout was heavy, with more people voting in the Democratic primary than in the Republican, in a state which Republican presidential candidates have carried in the past four elections.
If Clinton wins MI and does well March 15, when delegate-rich Florida, Illinois and OH hold primaries, she could be on a glide path to the nomination.
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But Sanders is correct that children were being poisoned from about April 2014, when the city switched its drinking water source from the Detroit system to the Flint River, until at least October 1, when the state finally acknowledged a lead contamination problem due to inadequate treatment of the Flint River water.
