Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Senator Bernie Sanders faced off in their second one on one debate of the campaign Thursday. Assistant News Editor Tyler Allen offers five takeaways from the night.
The minority vote
With upcoming primary states such as South Carolina with a strong African American population and Nevada with a strong Latino population, both candidates fought for the minority votes that have the power to make or break their campaigns. It was apparent that Sanders was locked in a tug-of-war for the minority vote with Clinton, who has historically won the majority of these demographics. The candidates made their cases for issues such as prison reform and immigration reform, taking bold stances in favor of minority voters.
Women issues
Hillary Clinton has been seen by many as a symbol for women’s empowerment, and she often makes it known that she looks forward to making history as the first woman president of the United States. Clinton was a bit slow to answer when the moderators brought up statistics from the New Hampshire primary, in which Sanders garnered 55% of the women vote. Sanders, however, did not hesitate to bring a drawn out argument to justify that outcome.
Wall Street
It’s clear that Clinton is fed up with Sanders’ continuous claims that a candidate who takes major corporation donations has been “bought.” Clinton brought up the fact that President Barack Obama received more super pac donations than any other candidate in the 2008 campaign and had still represented the democrats well throughout his presidency. Clinton said many super pacs make the decision to give to her, she doesn’t have a say in that. Sanders dismissed these claims, and compared his “political revolution” idea to break up major corporation politics to Teddy Roosevelt’s “trust busting” philosophy.
Foreign policy
The debate covered an extensive amount of foreign policy, and Clinton was always quick to detail her experience in this area from her time in the Obama administration. Clinton criticized Sanders’ failure to name any major political influences in foreign policy, something he finally did when asked a direct question about it by naming Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill. Clinton argued she wasn’t a one-issue candidate as opposed to Sanders and his unwavering focus on the domestic economy.
Last-minute sparring
For the vast majority of the debate, there wasn’t much blood drawn. After about an hour and forty-five minutes of respectfully disagreeing with each other, however, some jabs were thrown. This rose especially out of a late discussion about President Obama, in which Clinton argued that Bernie was historically critical of Obama’s policies and shouldn’t be seen as a trustworthy democratic candidate. Sanders got a little hot-headed hearing this, denying the claims and making it clear that only one of the two had run an entire campaign against Obama.
