Clinton, Sanders clash over Obama as they vie for minority votes

Exit polls after the New Hampshire primary showed that one in three voters said the most important attribute a candidate needs to have in order to win their vote is honesty.

Clinton’s single biggest objective all night – especially heading into SC, where African-American voters are hugely influential – was to drive a wedge between Sanders and Obama.

“The kind of criticism I hear from Senator Sanders, I expect from Republicans”, Mrs Clinton said.

Sanders named Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, while Clinton named Nelson Mandela – and then used the question to berate her opponent for his complaints about Obama over the years. He did better in suggesting that there is nothing disloyal or depraved about a senator occasionally differing with or criticizing a president, even one from his own party.

“You know, before it was called Obamacare, it was called Hillarycare”, Clinton said.

With Mrs Clinton looking to rebound after her crushing 22-point loss to Mr Sanders in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday, the two also differed over healthcare.

SANDERS: “A male, African-American baby born today stands a one-in-four chance of ending up in jail”. Viewers at home watching the candidates on a split screen could see Sanders huffing and puffing as Clinton spoke, laughing angrily to himself and scribbling notes as she spoke. Sanders may start highlighting his experience and reputation as a champion for progressive ideas and values. “People aren’t dumb. Why in god’s name does Wall Street make huge campaign contributions? I guess just for the fun of it, they want to throw money around”. And she continued to closely align herself with President Barack Obama, who remains popular particularly with black Democrats. She said FDR was great, but she also liked Nelson Mandela “for his generosity of heart, for his understanding of the need for reconciliation”.

He called for “fundamental police reform” that would “make it clear that any police officer who breaks the law will in fact be dealt with”. Clinton, who can hardly express an emotion in public without her ability to lead being called into question, didn’t have that luxury, and she didn’t try to indulge in it.

Both candidates agreed that the American people are exhausted of establishment politics and an economy they say is rigged against working families.

Though the group had planned to save its money for the general election, Priorities will now spend millions in upcoming primaries to promote early voting among groups likely to back Clinton, and to run pro-Clinton ads in SC, according to a report in the Washington Post. Both states have almost all-white populations.

In Iowa, 172,000 Democrats took part in the party caucuses. “I will not take advice from Henry Kissinger”, Sanders said, after calling Kissinger “one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country”.

I think I’ve been using the line about the “special place in hell” for women who don’t help women for even longer than Albright has (she’s stolen your line, Yahoo blogger Brian Goldsmith wrote to me in jest; he knows Albright is welcome to anything of mine). On the latter subject, she said, “I think what President Obama did is to exemplify the importance of this issue as the first African-American president”.

Sanders said economic inequality must be addressed to effectively improve race relations in America, because minorities fared much worse during the housing bubble and recession. Sanders did come across as more well-versed on foreign policy than in debates past – a low bar – he struggled to score clean hits on Clinton during the first hour of the debate, which focused exclusively on domestic policy, which should have been his strong suit. On Henry Kissinger. On Wall Street.

Clinton and Sanders tangled over immigration reform, an issue closely watched by the large Latino community in Nevada, and discussed ways of addressing institutional racism, an issue of interest to black voters, who make up more than half of the Democratic electorate in SC.