5 takeaways from the Democratic debate

US Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton accused her Republican rival Donald Trump of becoming the best recruiter for Daesh (the Islamic State) militant group, claiming that the extremists use Trump’s videos to incite hatred.

Former secretary of state Clinton, US Senator Bernie Sanders and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley each hit on the need to boost national security, raise the minimum wage, protect rights of women, minorities and the disadvantaged, and prevent Republicans from rolling back economic progress as they faced off in New Hampshire. Because of this, he said, it is possible his data was improperly accessed by Clinton’s staff. Sanders said his team actually notified the DNC of an earlier breach in the firewall between the data belonging to the two campaigns. Despite the events of Friday, the debate was mostly a cordial one as Sanders apologized to Clinton for what transpired.

The Sanders campaign has now complied with the DNC’s request to provide the information that we have requested of them.

In their final face-to-face showdown of the year, the candidates drew some the sharpest distinctions of the campaign on Mrs. Clinton’s ties to Wall Street and her war policies. Sanders fired his digital director when the story went public, but the DNC stoked the flames – helped along by some hot language from the Clinton campaign – by banning the Sanders campaign from seeing their own information.

The rising tensions between Clinton and Sanders, who have largely refrained from attacking each other, occurred at a crucial moment for Sanders, a democratic socialist who is trying to close the gap in the race six weeks before Iowa holds the first nominating contest.

Clinton quickly accepted the apology and said she very much appreciate Sander’s comment. “Having one position in 2000 and then campaigning against President Obama”, he said. Clinton challenged Sanders on how he would pay for those proposals, suggesting he’d pass on the costs to states and middle class Americans. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, defended his support of a plan for to guarantee paid family leave that would result in a modest payroll tax increase for all workers.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa, Martin”, Mr Sanders said. “So I wouldn’t really take much more of his word versus ours when everything we’ve said has been proven to be true”.

The heated remarks from O’Malley prompted pushback from Clinton and Sanders.

While there was broad agreement among the Democratic contenders that the US should not launch a ground war to defeat the Islamic State, they differed in the tactics they would take and whether the nation should seek regime change in Syria, where IS has a stronghold.

But on the debate stage, Sanders offered apologies while making clear he was still unhappy with the DNC. “And Wall Street is gonna like me even less”.

Sanders leads Clinton, 48 percent to 43.8 percent, in New Hampshire, according to the latest RealClearPolitics poll average.