How The Democratic Presidential Candidates Responded To The Black Lives Matter

When asked during the Democratic presidential debate in Las Vegas, Nev., on Tuesday, whether black lives matter or all lives matter, former Sen.

“Black lives matter”, Sanders responded to uproarious cheers.

Front-runner Hillary Clinton was let off the hook as debate moderator Anderson Cooper rephrased the question, asking her what she would do for the black community that President Obama has not.

“We need a new New Deal for communities of color”, her last words nearly drowned out by a few of the loudest cheers of the night.

He said that the “vilification of law enforcement” under the Obama administration is actually unsafe to black lives because if cops are afraid to do their cops, there’s less policing in areas where African-Americans need it most.

Lincoln A. Blades at The Grio writes that it’s upsetting that people choose to “conflate” the two concepts – Black Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter – as “dueling ideologies”.

Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley agreed with Sanders, somewhat less forcefully, and cited his time as Baltimore mayor in an effort to give himself a few credibility. “Black lives matter? How about all lives matter?”

Webb served as a rifle platoon and company commander in Vietnam, according to his biography.

Former Sen. Jim Webb of Virginia took a different position. The point is to get people to understand that Black lives have not mattered for centuries with American policy makers, and only by specifically declaring that Black lives do matter are we able to get our nation to address the ongoing crises in Black America.

While conversation about race during the CNN debate was brief, candidates touched on criminal justice reform issues throughout the evening. “There is an agenda there that we need to be following up on”.

“We need to tackle mass incarceration. That’s why I started off by saying we need to be committed to making it possible for every child to live up to his or her god given potential”, she said, concluding with a demand for universal pre-school and housing reforms.

“That is really hard to do if you don’t have early childhood education”, she said. There’s a long list. “I have talked about that at a few length, including things like body cameras, but we also need to be following the recommendations of the commission that President Obama impanelled on policing”.

The Texas senator was campaigning in Iowa today when a ThinkProgress reporter asked him if he’d be willing to sit down with #BlackLivesMatter leaders.

“And I put the African American soldier on the Mall”.

“I did not make our city immune to setbacks”, O’Malley said.

“We’ve saved over a thousand lives in Baltimore in the last 15 years of people working together”, O’Malley continued.