After losing by double digits in New Hampshire on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton continued to go after Bernie Sanders’ ambitious agenda on issues like college costs and health care during Thursday night’s PBS Newshour Democratic Debate in Milwaukee.
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Clinton and Sanders are both fighting to win support among African-American voters ahead of the SC primary on February 27. Sanders called it “one of the worst genocides in the history of the world”, and said, “So, count me in as somebody who will not be listening to Henry Kissinger”.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, D-N.Y., the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus’s political action committee, said in a statement that Sanders wanted to “undo President Obama’s accomplishments” and also pointed to the MSNBC interview, saying Sanders’ “disparaging comments towards the president are misplaced, misguided and do not give credit where credit is due”.
“When it mattered, he stood up and took on Wall Street”, she said. “If you’re the governor of a southern state, as [President] Bill Clinton was, and she of course was first lady, you will get certain experiences interacting with southerners and people of color that you probably won’t get coming up in politics as Bernie Sanders”. Clinton was the knowing veteran: Blow up the system, and you only trigger a new debate that could drag on for years and get nowhere.
Again, I’m sure he didn’t mean it this way, but Sanders essentially said that race relations will improve when black kids stop hanging out on street corners and live productive lives instead.
Famed feminist Gloria Steinem faces similar criticism after she suggested that young women were flocking to Bernie Sanders in order to meet men. Sanders prefers a single-payer system while Clinton’s supports Obama’s Patient Protection & Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare). Only seconds later, he accused Clinton of “flinging personal mud” at Sanders. Rather than a surge of the previously disaffected, Democratic turnout was down in the first two states to hold contests in the nomination race-by 28 percent in Iowa and 13 percent in New Hampshire.
But no word saw a bigger spike than “incarceration”, which jumped 210 percent, in part due to Sanders’ remarks on the rate of imprisonment in the African-American community. I support President Obama, but I’m telling you this: “We can do better”.
Clinton’s presidential run is being supported by wealthy donors in ways that Sanders’ is not.
“We need a leader on women’s issues”, Clinton said, “to protect the hard-fought gains that women have made that, make no mistake about it, are under tremendous attack”. In fact, Guy Cecil, a former Clinton staffer, was brought in to lead the group a year ago as a signal to her supporters that they could trust Priorities USA to serve her well.
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She has tried to distance herself from Sanders by presenting herself as the pragmatist who can get things done in Washington, including addressing income inequality and campaign finance reform – the core of his message. Clinton said she is running on her experience. “I was not that candidate”.
