Clinton and Sanders brawl over issues
Hillary Clinton dialed back some of her biting attacks on Bernie Sanders on Saturday, refocusing on Republicans and her own experience in the Obama administration as she launched her closing argument to voters in Iowa. An impressive organizational structure helped the first-term senator drum up support and have a large network of volunteers in key primary states.
She wouldn’t answer whether Sanders was qualified to be commander in chief, but said she was. He said he appreciates that Sanders “doesn’t take money from people with corporate ties”, something Gardner called a “source of corruption” within government.
In the first primary state, the polls all show Bernie Sanders ahead – but even here the polls are a freakish mixture, with wildly different margins. This year, they’re all picking up Democratic ballots to vote for Bernie Sanders.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton meets an attendee Friday, Jan. 22, 2016, at a NARAL Pro-Choice dinner in Concord, N.H. Her attacks, according to a memo describing the event, backfired when Sanders reinforced his message in his responses.
“The fact that she could be the first woman president is so cool to me”.
David Brock, a longtime Clinton supporter who founded the “super PAC” backing her, told The Associated Press on Thursday that the advertising presented a “bizarre” image of America focused on white voters.
Populist Trump, who has surprised all political pundits in the U.S. with a sustained campaign he has run so far, has been leading all opinion polls since he announced his candidature last summer.
Although she made a tacit case against him by saying the US can’t afford to undo gains made under Obamacare (something Clinton has warned Sanders’ plan for a “Medicare for all” system would do), Clinton avoided mentioning the name of the senator from neighboring Vermont, something she was not shy about doing in Iowa. Sanders has a narrow 2-point advantage over Clinton. It’s odder still when you consider that for most voters, environmental issues are fairly low priority. He said Sanders is the only candidate on the Democratic side who can turn out young people – at the level President Obama did in 2008 – along with non-voters and independents.
When asked whether she is part of the Democratic establishment during an interview on CNN’s “The Situation Room”, Clinton replied, “I just don’t understand what that means. And whether you’re in health care, or you sell automobiles, or you’re in banking – there’s a lot of interest in getting advice and views about what you think is happening in the world”, she told the Register. She said Mr Sanders was weak on foreign policy and “hasn’t thought it through” on a number of issues, including Iran.
And then, just a day later, Sanders released his Medicare-for-all healthcare plan, under pressure from Clinton and her aides to do so before voting starts on February 1. He said it is a three-way process, indicating Clinton and Democrat Martin O’Malley would have to agree to it. “I think the evidence is that it can”, he asserted.