Presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders were holding their first debate in more than a month Thursday, a showdown that comes at a tense moment ahead of next Tuesday’s Democratic primary in New York.
Republicans Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich were also in New York to speak at a state Republican Party gala before Cruz and Kasich were making appearances on late-night shows.
Front-runners Clinton and Trump hope New York can propel them into the general election in November. Preference polls show them leading their respective contests heading into Tuesday’s primary.
Sanders jabbed at Clinton while courting black leaders as he outlined policy prescriptions for jobs, education and criminal justice.
“If you believe that those issues can be addressed by establishment politics and establishment economics, you’ve got a very good candidate to vote for but it’s not Bernie Sanders,” he declared.
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The Democratic race has become increasingly heated in New York — including Sanders first questioning Clinton’s qualifications to be president and then reversing himself — and the tensions were likely to spill onto the debate stage.
Early Thursday, Sanders distanced himself from comments made by a surrogate the day before that voters shouldn’t “continue to elect corporate Democratic whores.”
Sanders said on Twitter that the comment by Dr. Paul Song, a health-care activist, “was inappropriate and insensitive.”
“There’s no room for language like that in our political discourse,” he wrote.
Jennifer Palmieri, the Clinton campaign’s communications director, responded on Twitter that it was “very distressing language to say the least.”
Both Democrats have New York ties. Clinton spent eight years as a senator for the state. Sanders, a Vermont senator, was born in Brooklyn. While he is on a winning streak in recent primaries and caucuses, he desperately needs a big victory in New York if he hopes to cut into Clinton’s delegate lead and slow her march to the nomination.
Pledged delegates from primaries and caucuses, according to The Associated Press:
Clinton 1,289
Sanders 1,038
Tally including superdelegates:
Clinton 1,758
Sanders 1,069
It takes 2,383 delegates to clinch the Democratic nomination. Superdelegates are free to support, and change their support for, the candidate of their choice.
Republicans eye New York
On the Republican side, Trump is a Queens native, built his fortune in New York’s real estate market and lives in a Manhattan high-rise bearing his name.
Trump hopes New York marks an end to the worst period of his candidacy, which raised new questions about his policy qualifications and revealed his campaign’s unpreparedness for a potential delegate fight if the Republican race heads to a contested convention in July.
A big victory in New York could preserve Trump’s ability to clinch the nomination before the convention. A candidate needs 1,237 delegates to clinch the Republican nomination.
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But Cruz has been cutting into Trump’s delegate lead and working feverishly to court delegates who would be free to switch loyalties if the convention’s first round of balloting doesn’t determine a clear nominee.
New York hasn’t been friendly territory for the Texas senator. Even as he’s tried to embrace East Coast culture, including making matzo with children in an Orthodox Jewish neighbourhood in Brooklyn, he’s been followed by his earlier criticism of Trump’s conceivably more liberal “New York values.”
Seeking to lower expectations, Cruz said Wednesday that if Trump doesn’t get more than 50 per cent of the vote in his home state, “that’s widely going to be seen as a crushing loss.”
Source:: http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/clinton-sanders-democratic-debate-1.3536145?cmp=rss
