Asked if she wanted the Democratic National Committee to sanction the debate, Clinton replied, “I would like the chairman of the parties and the campaigns to agree we can debate in New Hampshire next week”.
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But Sanders, who has surged ahead of Clinton in New Hampshire polls, has no plans to do so, his campaign said.
The meeting with Obama has been on the books “for days”, Sanders’ spokesman Michael Briggs told CNN. “I was on the floor of the Senate disagreeing with him over taxes”.
Like Clinton, Sanders opposes the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a key part of Obama’s trade agenda.
The DNC has been heavily criticized both for the small number of debates scheduled and the inconvenient times they have aired on television.
Sanders said Wednesday he didn’t see the interview as a dig.
But just as importantly, the meeting seemed created to banish any perception that Obama was giving a nod toward former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the Democratic campaign for president.
The tete-a-tete will not be the first between the two men since Sanders joined the presidential campaign and has been in the making at least since last month, when Sanders was at the White House for the Congressional Holiday Ball.
“We were always concerned that this would have been the first time in 32 years without a Democratic debate before the New Hampshire primary”.
The proposal comes as Sanders and Clinton are locked in a tight battle in the first-to-vote states of Iowa and New Hampshire.
Despite the apparent similarities between Obama and Sanders’ Iowa runs – including their pull with young voters – the President rejected any comparison in an interview taped last week. “I am, you know, anxious, if we can get something set up, to be able to be there”. “They’ve got a reality TV show going on the other side of the aisle, and we have a substantive and robust discussion about how to build on the progress that we’ve made”.
The meeting, which is closed to the press, could be awkward, given the president’s recent comments that seemingly downplayed the allure of the Sanders’ grassroots campaign. “There are those who say we cannot defeat a corrupt political system and fix a rigged economy”, Sanders says in the ad. “But I believe we need to lift our vision above the obstacles in place and look to the American horizon”.
The visit was one of several trips to the Obama White House for Sanders, typically for large, social events or policy rollouts. “He and Vice President Biden are trying to do their best to make sure that it is the voters in the Democratic primary process who make the decision, without being influenced by the president or the vice president”, he said.
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The White House is keeping quiet about what will be discussed at Wednesday’s meeting, only saying the gathering has been in the pipeline since December.
