Democratic Debate: Candidates push for criminal justice reform
“An African-American baby born today stands a one in four chance of ending up in jail”, Sanders said.
“What we have to do right now is bring our people together and understand that we must provide a path towards citizenship for 11 million undocumented people”, Sanders said.
Mrs Clinton said the donations did not mean she was in Wall Street’s pocket, and noted that President Barack Obama had taken donations from Wall Street during his campaigns. “I was involved in the sit-ins, the freedom ride, the march on Washington, the march from Selma to Montgomery and directed the board of education project for six years”. “I’m the only candidate up here, of the many candidates, who has no super PAC …”
PBS hosted the latest debate-8472/”>Democratic presidential debate on Thursday, Feb. 11, at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
Within the first round of questions in Thursday’s Democratic presidential debate, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders got into the weeds of gender politics.
GWEN IFILL: Senator, do you worry at all that you will be the instrument of thwarting history as Senator Clinton keeps claiming as she might be the first woman president?
Like the Clinton troops, the Sanders team has picked space in the heavily Democratic area of North Nashville for its office. “I am not a single-issue candidate, and I do not believe we live in a single-issue country”, she said. “I am asking people to support me because I think I am the most qualified, experienced and ready person to be the president and the commander in chief”. THE JUDICIAL SYSTEM AND RACE With an eye to on the minority vote, both candidates decried the high incarceration rate of African-Americans and called for broad reforms of the criminal justice system.
Sanders invoked the same themes that propelled him to victory in New Hampshire and a razor-thin loss in Iowa, including tax increases on the wealthiest Americans to fund a surge of new infrastructure programs and an expansion of Social Security benefits.
The former secretary of state, Sanders said, was “not my kind of guy”.
The rivals are meeting in Milwaukee for the PBS “NewsHour” debate being simulcast on CNN.
And in an attack on Republican front-runner Donald Trump, Clinton said that American Muslims “need to feel not just invited but welcome within the American society”, adding that Trump stirring up demagogy against American Muslims is “not only offensive, it’s risky”.
Members of the Clinton campaign quickly seized on Sanders’ answer, calling it a dig at President Barack Obama.
Said Sanders: “Turns out that the African-American community and the Latino community were hit particularly hard” by the Wall Street meltdown in 2008. Clinton’s own campaign message has looked muddled compared to his ringing call for a “political revolution”, and her connections to Wall Street have given Sanders an easy way to link her to the systems his supporters want to overhaul.
The foreign policy section of the debate was dominated by the candidates’ disagreement over the war in Iraq (Sanders voted against it, Clinton for it); how to oppose ISIS; and what to do about Syria.