EXPERIENCE PAYS FOR BATTLE VET CLINTON
Front-runner has answers ready for rivals’ criticisms
Hillary Clinton has done this before. And it showed.
After a damaging summer, the Democratic front-runner moved to regain her footing Tuesday night at the first Democratic debate, putting challenger Bernie Sanders on the defensive over his positions on gun control and his ability to get things done. She aggressively turned back criticism over her vote to authorize the use of force in Iraq by noting it had been a chief attack by rival Barack Obama in the 2008 campaign — and that he then asked her to serve as his secretary of State.
Her critics did their best to revive the issue, and others. Sanders called the Iraq invasion as “the worst foreign policy blunder in our nation’s history,” and former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley said the 2002 vote to approve it worried Americans even now because “people feel like a lot of our legislators got railroaded.”
Clinton had a parry ready. “I was very pleased when Gov. O’Malley endorsed me in 2008,” she replied to laughter.
There was no sassy undercard debate before the main event. No crowd of contenders jockeying on stage. And the only sign of Donald Trump was at the top of the 64-story hotel branded with his name just down the Strip.
That said, the first Democratic presidential debate resembled the first two Republican ones in this: It was a roiling clash of views, and there was clearly a
Former secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders disagreed on fundamental questions of the economy and foreign policy but agreed on at least one issue: the controversy swirling around Clinton’s use of a private email server.
“Let me say something that may not be great politics,” Sanders said. “The secretary is right. The American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails.”
“Me too! Me too,” Clinton said. She laughed, shook his hand and said, “Thank you, Bernie.”
It was a rare moment of affinity in a Democratic presidential debate Tuesday in which both major candidates were challenged to defend their records, as a CNN moderator suggested that Sanders was too liberal and Clinton wasn’t liberal enough.
“I’m a progressive, but I’m a progressive who likes to get things done,” Clinton said. She acknowledged changing positions but not principles. “I have been very consistent over the course of my entire life. I do absorb new information. I do look at what’s happening in the world.”
Clinton and Sanders, the candidates atop national and early state polls, dominated the debate and — emails notwithstanding — had sharp disagreements on guns, banking reform, foreign policy and other top issues.
They even disagreed on their fundamental economic worldview: Sanders, an avowed democratic socialist, complained of a “rigged economy” and decried “a casino capitalist process by which so few have so much” — a turn of phrase made more striking by the venue, the Wynn Las Vegas casino. Clinton said she was a capitalist but said the next president should “save capitalism from itself.”
“It’s our job to rein in the excesses of capitalism, so it doesn’t run amok,” she said. “We would be making a mistake by turning our back on the system that built the greatest middle class in the world.”
Clinton said she would continue the banking overhaul in the Dodd-Frank bill, which included the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Sanders said that law didn’t go far enough. “The Congress does not regulate Wall Street. Wall Street regulates Congress,” he said.
Sanders, who represents a state with a strong gun culture, defended his record on guns, saying he supports an assault weapons ban and closing the so-called gun show loophole. But Clinton went on the attack, accusing Sanders of voting against the 1993 Brady Bill, which requires background checks.
When Sanders said the immunity provision was part of a complicated bill, Clinton said, “It wasn’t that complicated to me.”
After Sanders called the Iraq “the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of our country,” Clinton noted that another Senate colleague — Barack Obama — repeatedly challenged her on the same issue in 2008. “After the election, he asked me to become secretary of State. He valued my judgment,” she said.
The minor candidates at the debate — all polling below 1% nationally — took jabs at Clinton throughout the debate. Former Virginia senator Jim Webb said he was disgusted by big money in the campaign. Former Rhode Island governor and senator Lincoln Chafee noted he’s never been involved in a scandal and questioned Clinton’s judgment on voting for the Iraq war.
“I have not changed on the issues,” Chafee said. “You’re looking at a block of granite.”
Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who’s advocated for more debates in an effort to gain ground, often sided more with Sanders than Clinton. He said lawmakers who voted for the Iraq war, as Clinton did as a senator “got railroaded by war fever and by polls.” He called for reinstating laws to ban banks from trading in securities.
And O’Malley said he was “very consistent about my principles,” suggesting Clinton was not. “I respect what Secretary Clinton and her husband have done for our country, but I think we need new leadership,” he said.
Clinton de-emphasized her president husband. “I am not campaigning to be president because my last name is Clinton.”
“I can’t think of anything more outsider than being the first woman president,” she said. It’s a qualification she mentioned repeatedly, and then coyly alluded to again after she returned to the stage appearing winded after an apparent bathroom break. “It takes me a little longer,” she said.
Clinton literally took center stage in the debate. After Webb complained that he couldn’t get a word in edgewise on his strong suit of foreign policy, Clinton defended getting the lion’s share of the air time. “Well, I am in the middle here, and lots of things coming from all directions.”
The CNN production gave the debate the atmosphere of a sporting event, with highly produced introductions, commercial breaks and even a pre-debate rendition of the national anthem by Sheryl Crow. The debate, the first of six for Democrats, was missing Joe Biden. CNN had kept a podium open for him should he announce his candidacy, but the vice president did not show.
Also missing: Donald Trump, the Republican front-runner whose presence at the Republican debate garnered big ratings and served as a lightning rod for the other candidates. O’Malley called the billionaire reality-show star a “carnival barker” and deplored his stance on immigration, but otherwise the candidates focused more on their Democratic opponents than the Republicans.
But Trump provided a running commentary on the debate on Twitter. “Sorry, there is no STAR on the stage tonight!” he wrote.
In recent weeks, Clinton has crept closer to Sanders on a number of more liberal policies. She came out in opposition to both the Keystone XL pipeline and the Trans-Pacific trade deal — which she previously supported — as she tries to neutralize an unexpectedly potent challenge from the self-described democratic socialist Vermont senator.
“It is going to be tough to walk away from her role” as the nation’s former top diplomat on issues such as Keystone and trade, said Bill Buck, a Democratic strategist who is unaligned with a candidate.
Clinton is trying to demonstrate her commitment to progressives without alienating wealthy donors her campaign will rely on far more than Sanders. For Sanders, the challenge was to convert his populist fire on the stump into a more personal and engaging approach that draws contrasts with Clinton’s past positions without appearing to directly attack her.