Hillary Clinton Asks South Carolina for ‘Defense’

As the race for the Democratic nomination gets tighter and nastier, Sanders’ campaign is confronting that promise when it considers how to respond to attacks from the Clinton campaign, walking the fine line between drawing contrasts with the former secretary of state and outright attacking her.

For the first time in 2016, all three Democratic candidates – Hillary Clinton, Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley – will take the same stage at the same time, for a debate Sunday night in Charleston, South Carolina. After Iowa and New Hampshire – two overwhelmingly white states – Sanders faces an electorate that is much more diverse and not as familiar with Sanders, especially in the South, which at the moment is Clinton Country.

While leading nationally, Clinton suddenly finds herself under threat of losing the first two state contests, in February 1 in Iowa, where the pair are neck and neck in the polls, and February 9 in New Hampshire, where Sanders has a significant lead.

With new polls showing Sanders either ahead or within striking distance in both Iowa and New Hampshire, he’s wearing a bigger target than ever before.

Clinton entered the 2016 race as the prohibitive favorite for the nomination, and she has spent much of her time tangling from afar with Republicans, arguing she is best candidate to build upon President Barack Obama’s agenda.

Sanders has a passionate following among young voters and liberals.

“It is time to pick a side”, Clinton says in the spot. The debate will be aired on NBC and carried live online for those watching the streaming coverage (leak to streaming video can be found below).

Bill Clinton simply is not wielding that kind of influence – good or bad – over voters so far this year, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.

But Clinton already showed she’s willing to tear into Sanders over what gun control supporters are calling “the Charleston loophole” in an interview with CNN this week.

South Carolina GOP consultant Rob Benfield said Sanders appeals to a portion of voters fed up with establishment politics, but it may not be enough to overshadow Clinton’s well-established popularity in the state.

Despite serious backlash from progressives, Clinton has doubled down on her critique of Sanders’ Medicare-for-all, single-payer health care proposal. He now champions most of the same aggressive gun-control measures as Clinton and Obama, and he talks about it frequently on the campaign trail. The Sanders campaign retorted by sending out a picture signed by Clinton in 1993 of the two candidates in which she thanked Sanders for his work in promoting universal healthcare. For Clinton, it wasn’t supposed to be this way against a septuagenarian, self-identified democratic socialist who began his campaign with no national profile and no financial network.

Several Democratic leaders also agreed that the Clinton campaign underestimated Sanders.

Armchair pundits from across the American political spectrum have offered diverse opinions about the news of a Super Bowl Sunday debate. And Sanders’ election-eve reversal on gun policy adds intrigue.

Last year, however, Sanders aides said that if given the chance to vote for the bill again, he would likely vote the same way. The amendment would instruct the Department of Commerce to monitor the impact of the repeal on rural stories.

In the past, he has supported immunity for gun manufacturers by saying he wanted to protect small stores in his home state. Sanders noted that the new legislation, proposed by U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal of CT and Representative Adam Schiff of California, would leave in place the parts of the 2005 law that require child safety locks and ban armor-piercing ammunition. And his advisers have said that Clinton has taken multiple positions on gun control during her career.