Third Democratic Debate Draws Less Viewers, But Big Issues

“We did suspend two more staffers today based on information that we received from data logs form the DNC, these documents were not previously made available to us”, Weaver said.

The one topic that never escaped discussion in both Republican and Democratic debates is terrorism, specifically the threat that is ISIS.

Saturday’s debate was the first for Democrats since the shooting in San Bernardino, California, where 14 people were killed by a married couple that authorities say had been radicalized. Hitting the DNC too hard on Saturday night would have gone against his image as an earnest old liberal dead-set on addressing issues.

All three candidates agreed that USA ground troops should not be used in the battle against ISIS. Instead, he chose to forgo the political opportunity, just as he did in the first debate when he dismissed controversy over Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state.

In a statement, Hillary for America press secretary Brian Fallon hoped for a swift resolution of the matter. “It’s just another Hillary lie”, Donald Trump said Sunday of Hillary Clinton’s claim that he was unwittingly starring in ISIS recruitment videos for potential terrorists.

Sanders opened the debate by apologizing to Clinton after it emerged that a now fired staffer on his campaign had accessed data about her voting lists during a security glitch affecting a firewall on a third-party server hosting Democratic voting statistics.

Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley sparred with the pro-regulation Sanders, who has the most conservative view on guns of all the candidates. “That’s why we need to work with them, not demonize them, as the Republicans have been doing”, she said.

Clinton also again struggled to explain her role in advocating military action in Libya in 2011 that resulted in the overthrow of longtime dictator Moammar Gadhafi but left behind a failed state, parts of which have become a haven for ISIS.

But for now, Clinton appears to be well positioned to ease through the Democratic primary and take the fight to her preferred targets in the Republican Party. The Democratic National Committee has rejected this criticism and argued that the fact that the debates have mostly ended up on weekends is due to the fact that they made the decision to air the debates on broadcast networks rather than cable, thus limiting the time slots that were potentially available since broadcast networks are generally unwilling to give away blocks of time on weeknights when regularly scheduled programming brings in higher viewership and higher advertising revenue.

Clinton also vowed not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans if elected next November, questioning the affordability of some of Sanders’ proposals such as creation of a single-payer healthcare system and tuition-free college. Clinton said leaving Assad, a client of Iran, in power posed too great a danger to the United States and its allies.

“The greed of Wall Street is destroying this economy and is destroying the lives of millions of Americans”, Sanders said. When the Force does awaken, it might also have another Jedi Knight to add to the mix, Hillary’s husband, former two-term president, Bill Clinton. “May I offer a different generation’s perspective on this?” he said.

Sanders’ campaign has tried to turn a misdeed into a strength, saying his underdog campaign was being held “hostage” by a party leadership that’s in the tank for Clinton. First of all, the Jets were playing the Cowboys and they beat them in a thriller that went down to the final 30 seconds or so.

The effort was the most spirited yet by Sanders as the Iowa Caucus and New Hampshire primary near.

Clinton is taking a beating in New Hampshire at the moment, but she remains far ahead in national polls.