Iowa forum: Sanders praises big government, Clinton promises bipartisanship

But on the town hall stage on Monday, she pushed back at Sanders’ judgment argument by evoking Obama, who remains popular with Democratic voters and was critical of her Iraq War vote when the two competed in 2008. Clinton also spoke about her “40-year record of going after inequality – not only economic inequality, but racial inequality, sexist inequality, homophobic inequality”. “It just seems to me that the problems we have”, Sanders said, “are so serious that we have got to go beyond establishment politics and establishment economics”. “Somebody who has taken them on and won”. They make these charges. “If you are paying, now, $10,000 a year to a private health insurance company and I say to you, hypothetically, ‘You’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes – or actually less than that – but you’re not going to pay any more private health insurance, ‘” Sanders said. “Because I’ve been on the front lines of progress since I was on your age”.

Another Arizona-based political observer thought all three – Sanders, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley – were at their best during the town hall forum in Des Moines, Iowa.

Sanders, who is riding a burst of enthusiasm in Iowa, reiterated his calls for free tuition at public colleges and universities and implementing a single payer health care system to cover all.

In an extended answer to a question, Sanders pointed out that he voted against the Iraq War (which he described as the “most significant vote and issue regarding foreign policy that we have seen in this country in modern history”), the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific Partnership worldwide trade deal – positions that Clinton arrived at late in life, or not at all.

His toughest came from moderator Chris Cuomo, who asked the low polling O’Malley who his second choice for president would be. It’s exactly the attractive kind of package her campaign has struggled to project in the final week before Iowa holds its caucuses.

Rather than choosing her husband, Bill Clinton, Mrs Clinton responded unhesitatingly: “Sorry President Obama, sorry Bill, Abraham Lincoln”.

Obama also made a point of saying that as president, “you don’t have the luxury of just focusing on one thing”, a jab of sorts at Sanders, who has focused nearly exclusively on his selected domestic themes.

He insisted that in the long run, it would save the middle-class money. “In my view we need a political revolution where millions of people stand up and say you know what, that great government of ours belongs to all of us, not just the few”.

And to fund it, he pledged, “We will raise taxes”.

Whether you like Sanders or loathe him, it’s hard not to be moved by the video above. And, Sanders added, he’s been “blessed with good health and good endurance”.

And Clinton pressed back against Vice President Joe Biden’s assertion that she’s a recent arrival to the issue of income inequality.