Clinton, Sanders to debate in midst of argument over progressive credentials
Clinton, Sanders to debate in midst of argument over progressive credentials
(about 3 hours later)
MANCHESTER, N.H. — A day after taking the stage separately for a town hall, the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are set to share one Thursday night in what could be a defining debate days before the New Hampshire primary.
DURHAM, N.H. — Former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders will share a debate stage Thursday night for the last time before the New Hampshire primary.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders will face off one-on-one for the first time this election, with some key questions swirling in the aftermath of Clinton’s razor-thin victory Monday in the Iowa caucuses. Among them: Is Clinton too close to Wall Street, and has Sanders distanced himself too much from President Obama?
In this debate, which begins at 9 p.m. Eastern on MSNBC, both Clinton and Sanders will be playing an unfamiliar role.
Since touching down in New Hampshire early Tuesday, the two candidates and their boosters have traded jabs on those issues and others. The Sanders camp has highlighted the speaking fees Clinton accepted from large financial firms, including Goldman Sachs. Clinton allies have pointed to a blurb Sanders wrote for a book that argues that Obama let progressives down.
For Sanders, that means being the front-runner.
[Hillary Clinton is going to really regret saying these 4 words about Goldman Sachs]
The “democratic socialist” from Vermont has spent most of this race as an underdog, chipping away at Clinton’s by highlighting her close ties to Wall Street and her policy shifts on issues like the Iraq War and same-sex marriage.
The Vermont senator and the former secretary of state are scheduled to engage directly at 9 p.m. EST in a debate broadcast on MSNBC.
He was still doing it Thursday, in an appearance in Rochester, N.H., just hours before the debate.
They sparred Wednesday over whether Clinton is enough of a “progressive,” while she and Sanders both sought to manage expectations in a race that has now shifted to very different terrain.
[The 7 big issues in Democrats’ New Hampshire debate]
With the New Hampshire primary Tuesday, and polls showing sizable leads here for Sanders, the Clinton team is seeking to emphasize the advantages the senator from Vermont has as a next-door neighbor.
“Sometimes it’s easy to apologize for a bad vote 15 or 20 years later when the tide has changed,” Sanders said at a rally here. He was referring to Clinton’s vote in favor of the Iraq War, which came in 2002 while she was a Democratic senator from New York. Clinton has apologized for that vote. Sanders, then in the House, voted no. “It is a lot harder to stand up … and cast the right vote. That’s what leadership is about, not having to apologize for what's right.”
[The New Hampshire primaries are Feb. 9. Delegates at stake: 23 Republican, 32 Democratic.]
But now, in New Hampshire, which is next door to his home state, Sanders is playing Clinton’s old role: trying to hold on to a huge lead. He is leading Clinton 61 percent to 30 percent among likely Democratic primary voters, according to the latest CNN/WMUR poll. The margin was 58 to 38 percent in a new NBC News/Wall Street Journal/Marist poll.
“We face some pretty significant headwinds here in New Hampshire,” Clinton’s campaign manager, Robby Mook, told reporters at a breakfast Thursday. “Senator Sanders has been leading here for some time, since the summer. It’s hard to underestimate the neighboring state advantage in this race.”
In recent days, Sanders has tried to lower expectations here, even as the polls have raised them. He’s talked about the Clinton family’s long experience in New Hampshire, and Hillary Clinton’s own win in New Hampshire in 2008.
Sanders’s camp counters that Clinton should be stronger in the Granite State, given her win here as a presidential candidate in 2008.
Clinton, by contrast, is playing up the underdog role — trying to make expectations low, then beat them. Clinton’s campaign has said New Hampshire is Sanders’s “back yard,” but she has poured in supporters to try to close the gap in the polls.
Sanders’s questioning of Clinton’s progressive credentials is expected to again be an issue at the debate, as it was Wednesday on the campaign trail, on Twitter and in a town hall broadcast by CNN.
[Clinton, Sanders spar over ‘progressive’ label]
The exchange was sparked by a day-old jab from Sanders, who told reporters in Keene that Clinton is a progressive “some days,” except when she “announces she is a moderate.”
Sanders elaborated on those views during the CNN broadcast, saying he admired Clinton’s work on children’s issues, among other things. But “there are other issues where I think she is just not a progressive,” Sanders told host Anderson Cooper.
“I do not know any progressive that has a super PAC and takes $15 million from Wall Street,” Sanders said. “That’s just not progressive.”
Sanders ticked off several other issues on which he saw Clinton falling short of the mark, including the Iraq War, which Clinton voted to authorize while a senator from New York, and the proposed Keystone XL oil pipeline, which Clinton wavered on for months before announcing her opposition.
Sanders also pointed to a news report from the fall in which Clinton described herself as a “moderate.”
“I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” Clinton countered at the CNN forum, at which she and Sanders appeared onstage separately.
[A stark dividing line in the Clinton-Sanders contest: Age 45]
She questioned Sanders’s attempt to be “the gatekeeper of who’s a progressive,” ticking off other Democrats, including Obama and Vice President Biden, who she said would not meet his threshold.
“I’m not going to let that bother me,” Clinton said.
In response to a question from a rabbi, Clinton offered some insight into how she has dealt with difficult issues while appearing to allude to indiscretions by her husband, former president Bill Clinton.
“Everybody knows I have lived a very public life for the last 25 or so years,” Clinton said. “I’ve had to be in public, dealing with some very difficult issues.”
Clinton said she read the prodigal son parable in the Bible.
“I read that parable. . . . That just became a lifeline for me,” she said.
[Hillary Clinton opens up about running for president: ‘This is hard for me’]
Speaking at a campaign event earlier here, Clinton highlighted her work on progressive causes such as gay rights, women’s rights and defense of Social Security, and she called Sanders’s comments a “low blow.”
“So I hope we keep it on the issues because if it’s about our records, hey, I’m going to win by a landslide,” Clinton said.
On the stump Wednesday, Clinton sought to frame the race as a choice between one candidate with a record of accomplishments and another offering worthy but unachievable goals.
“There’s a lot of talk in this campaign between Senator Sanders and myself about whether voters will vote with their heads or their heart,” Clinton said. “Let me ask you to vote with both.”
Her wonky stump speech was still heavily laden with policy, but Clinton offered voters a more nuanced argument for her candidacy, focused on “heart.”
“Think about how we need to have more heart in America,” Clinton said. “More heart for those who are suffering, who are left behind and left out, more heart for working folks who feel like they are not getting ahead because the game is rigged against them.”
Sanders had a huge lead over Clinton — 61 percent to 32 percent — among likely New Hampshire voters in a poll released Wednesday by the University of Massachusetts at Lowell.
The margin was larger than in recent polls, but it underscored both Clinton’s challenge in closing the gap and Sanders’s challenge in managing expectations. Sanders also received Secret Service protection Wednesday for the first time — an indication of his growing viability.
While Sanders’s team would certainly welcome a big win in New Hampshire, it was trying to tamp down expectations for that Wednesday.
At a late-afternoon news conference in Concord, Sanders reminded reporters of the Clinton family’s history in New Hampshire.
“Her husband ran for president here twice; she ran and won in 2008,” Sanders said, adding: “We expect a very difficult race. We take nothing for granted.”
Clinton aides said that the campaign’s strategy in New Hampshire is to narrow the gap with Sanders as much as possible. While they said that winning the state is unlikely, they hoped to force Sanders to leave a state where he has a clear advantage with only a narrow margin, calling into question his ability to compete in later primaries.
An influx of support from staffers in Clinton’s Brooklyn headquarters began arriving in New Hampshire in recent days to bolster the campaign’s ground game. Even before votes were cast in Iowa, staff in New Hampshire began rallying hundreds of volunteers over the weekend to begin get-out-the-vote activities. More than 500 volunteers hit the ground in Nashua on Saturday. Hundreds more fanned out in Manchester on Sunday.
[Bill Clinton, prominent African American women head south to protect Hillary Clinton’s firewall]
[Bill Clinton, prominent African American women head south to protect Hillary Clinton’s firewall]
Echoing the sentiments of many of her boosters, Clinton referred to the New Hampshire contest as taking place in Sanders’s “back yard.”
Clinton barely beat Sanders in the Iowa caucuses Monday. Her campaign has said, though, that the road will get easier for her after these first two states, which have a lot of white voters and very liberal voters — two groups among whom Sanders does well.
“New Hampshire always favors neighbors, which I think is neighborly,” she quipped.
Their debate Thursday will most likely reprise an argument between the two about whether Clinton should be counted as a “progressive.” Earlier this week, Sanders said that Clinton is a progressive “some days,” except when she “announces she is a moderate.”
She dismissed the suggestions of some “pundits” that she should move on to other states.
Clinton called Sanders’ comments a “low blow,” but her pitch to voters is essentially based on the idea that Sanders’s brand of progressivism is too idealistic and uncompromising to ever work in the real world.
“I have to tell you, I just could not ever skip New Hampshire,” she said.
“I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” Clinton said at a CNN forum Wednesday in which the two candidates appeared one after the other.
Both candidates also sought Wednesday to highlight issues that they think play to their strengths.
[Clinton, Sanders spar over ‘progressive’ label]
Sanders’s news conference in Concord focused on his opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed free-trade agreement that Obama championed. Clinton announced her opposition to the deal long after Sanders and has been more pro-trade than Sanders throughout her career, including as a senator from New York.
Also Thursday, Clinton reported that her campaign had raised $15 million in January — $5 million less than Sanders’s, according to the Associated Press. The AP said this was the first time an opponent had out-raised her.
Clinton, meanwhile, has appeared twice this week — including in Derry on Wednesday morning — with former congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords of Arizona and her husband, astronaut Mark Kelly, who have endorsed her based on her support for tougher gun laws.
This will be the first time that Sanders and Clinton have debated without former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley. O’Malley dropped out of the race Monday after he got just 0.6 percent of the vote in Iowa.
Clinton said little about Sanders’s record on guns Wednesday, but she has repeatedly said that he is not tough enough on the issue, citing several of his votes, including one in 2005 to grant legal immunity to gun dealers and manufacturers when their products are used in crimes.
A day after taking the stage separately for a town hall, the two Democratic presidential hopefuls are set to share one Thursday night in what could be a defining debate days before the New Hampshire primary.
While Clinton touted her narrow victory in Iowa, the Sanders camp continued to refer to it as “a tie” Wednesday, even as Sanders acknowledged that Clinton would probably get a couple more national delegates out of the process — an estimated 22 to his 20.
The Clinton-Sanders race was once marked by polite disagreements about governing style. Sanders, of course, famously dismissed a damaging Clinton scandal by saying he didn’t actually care about “your damn emails.”
Echoing an assessment by his campaign manager a day before, Sanders said that his team was reviewing the results and could not be certain who actually fared better, given the arcane nature of the state’s caucus rules.
But as their race has tightened, both sides have turned less polite.
“To tell you the truth, the Iowa caucus is so complicated it’s not 100 percent sure we didn’t win it,” Sanders said during an appearance on NBC’s “Today” show.
[Sanders calls the Clinton campaign ‘fantastic spinners’ and offers his criteria for negative ads]
Karen Tumulty contributed to this report.
The Sanders campaign has criticized the speaking fees Clinton accepted from large financial firms, including Goldman Sachs. To Sanders — who wants to have government break up these banks to reduce their power — the payments are proof that Clinton owes Wall Street a favor.
Clinton allies have pointed to a blurb Sanders wrote for a book that argues that President Obama let progressives down.
