Front-runner Sanders under new attack
Debate descends into ‘unseemly spectacle’
CHARLESTON: The Democratic presidential candidates delivered a barrage of criticism against their party’s emerging front-runner, Sen Bernie Sanders, at a debate on Tuesday night, casting him as a divisive figure with unrealistic ideas, even as they continued to batter Michael Bloomberg for his extreme wealth, his record on policing and his alleged behaviour toward women.
Mr Sanders, in his first debate since a smashing victory in the Nevada caucuses last weekend, cut a combative but perhaps not a commanding figure, firmly defending his left-wing agenda on subjects like health care and foreign policy against attacks from all sides.
The forum plunged repeatedly into an unsightly spectacle of flailing hands and raised voices, and even outright chaos, with candidates talking over one another and the moderators struggling and failing at times to direct an orderly argument.
But Mr Sanders said little that seemed intended to ease the concerns of Democrats who do not share his views or who worry that such stances could be politically damaging to the party, and the debate underscored vulnerabilities that are likely to shadow him for as long as the race lasts, and perhaps into a general election against President Donald Trump.
In one striking exchange, Mr Sanders addressed his record of praising some accomplishments of the Castro government in Cuba by intensifying his denunciations of past American foreign policy, invoking what he called malign intervention in countries like
Chile and Iran.
Mr Sanders had sceptical Democrats sharing the stage with him in Charleston, some fighting fiercely for political survival.
Former Vice President Joe Biden, who is counting on South Carolina to resuscitate his presidential candidacy, challenged Mr Sanders on his comments about Cuba and his opposition to certain forms of gun control in an insistent performance that reflected the urgent stakes for his campaign.
Mr Biden’s determined focus on South Carolina was apparent from the early moments of the debate. He vowed to win the state outright; delivered a lengthy attack on Tom Steyer, a billionaire investor who is trying to black voters away from Mr Biden; and as the debate ended abruptly pledged to appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court.
And when Mr Sanders invoked former president Barack Obama, arguing that he had gone no further in praising the Cuban system than Mr Obama did during a visit there, Mr Biden took issue with that comment and indicated he had discussed it recently with Mr Obama himself.
“I never say anything about my private conversations with him,” Mr Biden said. “But the fact of the matter is, he, in fact, does not, did not, has never embraced an authoritarian regime and does not now.”
If Mr Biden is counting on a surge of support from black voters in South Carolina this weekend to propel him back into contention nationally, the rest of the contenders have even less certain paths forward as the clock counts down.
It was not clear by the end of the debate that any one opponent stood apart from the pack as the most successful rival to Mr Sanders, and time is running short for anyone to do so.