Both Republican and Democratic parties will formally name their presidential candidates at conventions in July.
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Democrats are feeling the Bern so much that the Vermont senator is practically tied with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in a new nationwide poll.
Hillary Clinton locked horns with her rival for the Democratic White House nomination Bernie Sanders in a party debate Thursday, saying his promises “don’t add up” and accusing him of smear tactics.
On Thursday, Clinton admitted her mistake.
Both candidates grew heated as Sanders again lambasted Clinton’s ties to Wall Street, with the former Secretary of State asserting that the Sanders campaign had engineered an “artful smear” to paint her as being in the pocket of corporate donors.
“It is fair to say, Senator, that in your definition, as you being the self-proclaimed gatekeeper for progressivism, I don’t know anyone else who fits that definition”, Clinton said, ripping into her challenger.
“Enough is enough. If you’ve got something to say, say it directly”. Her team believes Sanders is getting away with breaking his pledge to avoid negative attacks.
She argued that it is now more important to defeat the terror group that has taken over vast areas of Iraq and Syria than continue to argue about the roots of the Iraq War.
“Secretary Clinton does represent the establishment”, Sanders replied.
Eleven percent of Democrats say that they remain undecided, according to the survey conducted in the days after Clinton narrowly beat Sanders by 0.2 percentage points in the Iowa Democratic caucus. “I represent, I hope, ordinary Americans”, he said. “I don’t think these attacks are worthy of you”.
In their debate, Clinton and Sanders argued over who has the liberal credentials to deliver on an agenda of better access to health care, more affordable college, fighting income inequality and more.
A new CNN/WMUR tracking poll showed that Sanders’s support in the small northeastern state that holds the first in the nation primary on Feb 9 has gone up slightly from the 57 per cent he held in a late January CNN/WMUR poll. It was reminiscent of her 2008 run against Barack Obama, when she also began as the front-runner but became a sharper and less cautious candidate as she began to lose.
The central conflict at the debate centered on who could rightly claim the title of being “progressive”, and thus deserving of the candidacy for the country’s left-leaning party. That’s seven years ago, 800,000 jobs a month. “And enough is enough”, Clinton said.
Watch above, via Sanders for President.
He reiterated his belief that as president, he could muscle big government programs through a divided Washington, even those that include tax hikes to pay for the costs. Then she took after the Vermont senator for his efforts to cast her as beholden to Wall Street interests because of the campaign donations and speaking fees she’s accepted from the financial sector. “The business model of Wall Street is fraud”, said the self-proclaimed Democratic socialist.
“If we’re going to get into labels, I don’t think it was particularly progressive to vote against the Brady Bill five times”.
Sanders, who has his own reputation as an all-about-the-issues candidate at stake if the race devolves into personal attacks, returned the favor.
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On that, at least, they shook hands.
