Bernie Sanders: Hillary Clinton Hasn’t Shown the ‘Courage’ Necessary to Stand

“In January 2017 a new president is going to walk into the Oval Office”, she said.

This was a hard-hitting speech, and an indiciation of where the Democratic race is heading.

Clinton comes into this contest with significant advantages.

This time, Clinton has built a formidable team of field organizers around Iowa, mindful of the ground game edge that Obama had in the state in 2007 and 2008. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign event, at the Tropicana Hotel in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Jan. 6, 2016. Clinton holds a double-digit lead over Sanders in the most recent poll.

Sanders will deliver what his campaign is calling a “major policy address” on Wall Street reform in NY. “Because you are the first line of defense”.

Even a campaign video captured Clinton’s caution: She wants to be the candidate for the struggling, the striving and the successful, she said.

“If I thought that alone would prevent the potential next crisis, I would raise my hand and join”, Clinton said at a town hall in New Hampshire.

As Sanders noted on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”, he doesn’t believe Hillary Clinton has the “courage” to stand up to Wall Street.

These remarks are ostensibly a direct attack against Hillary Clinton as she has had a cozy relationship with Wall Street (SEE: 11 facts showing Hillary Clinton will not “topple” 1% or support average Americans).

Silver also said that Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s chances of winning his party’s nomination are extremely low despite the amount of media coverage he has received.

His supporters are substantial, and they are vocal.

The gulf between the Sanders and Clinton support was very visible.

“It’s just not time for me to do that yet”, she said.

Political scientists also say general election matchup polls, like the one Sanders cites, are not predictive or particularly meaningful at this point in the election. While Clinton and Sanders supporters sat on opposing sides of the room, challenging each other to who could chant louder, O’Malley didn’t have a noticeable cheering section.

“But let me very clear: That result will not happen with establishment politics and establishment economics”, he said. “They sure showed the American people”.

While Sanders remains behind Clinton by a wide margin in national polls, he is optimistic and thinks his campaign has the momentum going forward.

Sanders himself seems pretty at ease about the whole thing.

Though the candidates spoke separately, the evening did highlight several policy differences among the contenders. That was a not-so-subtle jab at Sanders, who has proposed moving to a single-payer system.

“The choice of Bernie Sanders as the Democratic nominee puts the party in a much stronger position to defeat Republicans”, campaign manager Jeff Weaver said on a conference call with reporters Tuesday afternoon. “Within one-year, my administration will break these institutions up so that they no longer pose a grave threat to the economy”, he said.

Sanders also vowed to break up big banks, saying that this plan was tougher than Clinton’s.

“If a bank is too big to fail, it is too big to exist”.

Instead, Sanders is choosing to push for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, a Depression-era banking that separated commercial and investment banks until its repeal under President Bill Clinton. We’re bringing out big crowds. “And America can’t afford for it to be a Republican, who will rip away all the progress we’ve made”. But while she has tagged Sanders’s ideas as simply too costly or unrealistic in other areas (like health care, college financing, and infrastructure), she is making a more assertive case on financial reform.

“My experience is different from my competitors”, O’Malley said.