Democratic US presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Bernie Sanders on Thursday aggressively challenged each other’s judgment to be president in a Democratic debate, wrangling over Wall Street banks, the minimum wage and gun control just days before the critical New York primary.
The showdown in Brooklyn came at a pivotal moment in the party’s primary campaign, with Clinton leading in the delegate count, but Sanders generating huge enthusiasm for his surprising candidacy.
Clinton has accumulated 1,289 pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, while Sanders has 1,038. Her lead grows significantly when the superdelegates are added in: 1,758 for Clinton and 1,069 for Sanders.
Photo: Reuters
It takes 2,383 to clinch the Democratic nomination. Sanders would need to win 68 percent of the remaining delegates and uncommitted superdelegates to reach that figure.
The Vermont senator took a biting and often sarcastic tone as he sought to chip away at Clinton’s credibility. He cited her support for the unpopular Iraq war and for free trade agreements, as well as her willingness to accept money through a super political action committee, as evidence that she lacks the needed judgment to lead the nation.
Still, Sanders backed away from previous statements questioning Clinton’s qualifications, saying the former secretary of state does have the “experience and intelligence” to be president.
Clinton made little effort to hide her irritation with Sanders’ challenging of her qualifications, saying that while she has been “called a lot of things in my life, that was a first.”
She also cast Sanders as unprepared to implement even his signature policy proposals, including breaking up big banks.
“I think you need to have the judgement on day one to be commander in chief,” she said.
The debate was the first for the Democratic candidates in five weeks. It came ahead of Tuesday’s primary in New York, a high-stakes contest with a huge cache of delegates at stake.
For Clinton, a win in her adopted home state would blunt Sanders’ recent momentum and put his pursuit of the nomination further out of reach. A Sanders upset over Clinton would shake up the race, raising fresh concerns about her candidacy and breathing new life into the Vermont senator’s campaign.
On the Republican side, protests raged outside a state party gala as Republican frontrunner Donald Trump delivered an impassioned defense of the city he calls home. The billionaire businessman praised the city’s response to the nation’s deadliest terrorist attacks in remarks designed to jab leading rival Ted Cruz, a Texas senator who has repeatedly condemned “New York values” in his push to defeat the New York real estate mogul.
Trump was the target of rowdy protesters, who hung an effigy of the billionaire businessman and chanted: “How do you spell racist? T-R-U-M-P.”
The raucous scene came shortly after Florida prosecutors dismissed a criminal complaint against Trump’s campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, two weeks after local police charged him with grabbing a reporter.
The Democratic primary has been fought for months on familiar terrain. Clinton has cast Sanders’ proposals for breaking up banks and offering free tuition at public colleges and universities as unrealistic. Sanders has accused Clinton of being part of a rigged economic and political system, hammering her repeatedly for giving paid speeches to Wall Street banks and refusing to release the transcripts.
Clinton continued to struggle to explain why she has not released the transcripts, saying only that she will do so when other candidates are required to do the same thing. She tried to raise questions about Sanders’ own openness for not releasing his income taxes.
The senator pledged that he would release his most recent tax returns yesterday, and said there would be “no big money from speeches, no major investments” in the disclosures.
Sanders, whose campaign has focused squarely on economic issues, showed more fluency on foreign policy than in previous debates, particularly during an extended exchange on the intractable conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. He urged the US to be “even-handed” in dealing with both sides and said Washington must acknowledge that Israel is not right all of the time.
Clinton highlighted her involvement with Middle East peace efforts as US President Barack Obama’s secretary of state, saying pointedly: “Describing the problem is a lot easier than trying to solve it.”
Sanders has won a string of recent primary contests, including a big victory earlier this month in Wisconsin. However, because Democrats award their delegates proportionally, he has struggled to cut into the lead Clinton took earlier in the voting. He has also failed to persuade superdelegates — the party insiders who can back the candidate of their choice regardless of how their states vote — to switch their loyalties from Clinton.
Despite his long mathematical odds, Sanders has vowed to stay in the race through the party’s convention in July.
Backed by legions of loyal supporters, he has amassed impressive fundraising totals that give him the financial wherewithal to do just that.
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