Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton moved past the rancor over a breach of her campaign’s valuable voter data, shifting Saturday night’s debate into a pointed but polite discussion of national security, Americans’ heightened terrorism fears and the economy.
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“He is becoming ISIS’s best recruiter”, Clinton said of the self-declared Islamic State extremist group, claiming that jihadists are “showing videos of Donald Trump insulting Islam and Muslims in order to recruit more radical jihadists”.
She still has a nomination to win, but Clinton offered a few instructive lines on what her general election campaign might look like.
“Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people”, said Clinton, the former secretary of state. I want to make sure the wealthy pay their fair share, which they have not been doing.
Martin O’Malley called Trump “untried and incompetent” as he panned the real estate mogul’s proposal and immigration reform ideas.
“No, I think they won’t”, he said.
New Hampshire is the first primary state, and is the only significant contest so far where Sanders, who is Jewish, poses a significant threat to Clinton.
Sanders expressed concerns about the ability to enforce such a policy, saying it leaves certain aspects of the conflict uncertain: “I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be”.
We asked the Clinton camp where they got that from.
Clinton touted a no-fly zone in Syria to complement a coalition effort to wipe out ISIS and to protect refugees in safe zones in that country. The political neophyte tops most Republican national polls and is putting establishment candidates like Jeb Bush in knots. She has since called that vote a mistake.
Sanders said he was sorry, Clinton accepted his apology, and that was that.
“She’s gotten every single foreign policy challenge wrong, and no, Mrs. Clinton, we are not where we need to be”, Fiorina said, adding that the policies of Clinton and President Barack Obama amount to “leading from behind” and letting others set the agenda.
The Democrats promised to provide economic relief for the middle class, make public education more affordable, and expand health care access.
The Sanders campaign’s handling of the data breach this week emphasized the apparent disconnect between the candidate and his staff. His aides came out swinging on Friday after revelations that their staffers stole some of Clinton’s voter data, using a clumsy response by the Democratic National Committee to charge party leaders with favoritism and insinuate that her campaign also lifted some of their information. But the campaign rejected the allegations the Sanders team stole data, and it sued the DNC to regain access to the voter information.
“We are pleased that the Sanders campaign has agreed to submit to an independent audit to determine the full extent of the intrusion its staff carried out earlier this week, and also to ensure that Sanders’ voter file no longer contains any of the proprietary data that was taken from us”, he said.
“Yes, I apologize”, Sanders responded. I mean she made it up.
“I think Secretary Clinton and I have a fundamental disagreement”.
“They’re trying to find places where they can get to her left and that’s an easy one”, said Christopher Galdieri, a politics professor at Saint Anselm College, which hosted the debate.
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Tax hikes on the middle-class, Clinton said, were “off the table”, while the former senator from NY was careful to play nice with Wall Street and big business.
