Democratic presidential aspirants made their final pitch to party members in Iowa, the state from where the candidate selection process will begin on February 1, by projecting their respective strengths — Hillary Clinton her foreign policy experience and Bernie Sanders his fight against inequality. Former Maryland Governor Martin O’Malley, a distant third in the race, made a spirited case for his candidature too.
Ms Clinton repeatedly invoked President Barack Obama, and her husband and former president Bill Clinton, to buttress her claims for a job that she said required handling several things simultaneously. And she dwelt deep into comments made by Mr. Obama in a fresh interview that were interpreted — tenuously perhaps — by some commentators as favouring her.
“Bernie came in with the luxury of being a complete long shot and just letting loose,” Mr. Obama told the Politico . “I think Hillary came in with both privilege and burden of being perceived as the front-runner. … You’re always looking at the bright, shiny object that people haven’t seen before — that’s a disadvantage to her.” Mr. Obama characterised Mr. Sanders as a principled outsider seeking to change the “terms of the debate that were set by Ronald Reagan 30 years ago.”
The Obama interview setting the backdrop, all three candidates hailed him as the model to emulate but Ms. Clinton anchored her arguments in her association with Mr. Obama. Ms. Clinton detailed her role in laying the ground for the Iran nuclear deal and bringing about a ceasefire between Israel and Palestine in 2012.
“She has experience. But can’t say she has good judgment,” Mr. Sanders said, citing Ms. Clinton’s vote in favour of the invasion of Iraq in 2003 when George W. Bush was the President. Mr. Sanders said all that he feared about the invasion has come true. “It does not give me great pleasure.”
“President Obama trusted my judgment and invited me to be the Secretary of State,” she countered.
Mr. Sanders countered the charge that he lacked experience in foreign policy with the argument that it was his assessment of the situation in West Asia that turned out to be valid in subsequent years than Ms. Clinton’s. “The vote (favouring the Iraq war) was a mistake,” Ms. Clinton admitted.
Ms. Clinton countered the charge that her track record of fighting inequality was weak by offering a wider definition of the word itself. She said, beyond the “narrow definition of economic inequality,” she had been fighting against inequality based on race, gender, religion, and sexual preference all her life. “I have taken on the status quo all through my career,” she said. Specifically on the question of economic inequality, she said it was during Mr. Clinton’s time that “Americans never had it so good.”
Mr. Sanders, who laced his arguments with humour and charm to underplay his combative image, said, as Senator, he has worked with Republicans numerous times on legislative issues. Asked to define his idea of ‘democratic socialism,’ Mr. Sanders said: “In essence, we cannot have a government that is dominated by the interests of a few billionaires. We need to have a system that works for all of us.”
Mr. O’Malley, who agreed with most things that Mr. Sanders said on inequality, would call the remedy by a different name — “fair market capitalism.”
Mr. Sanders will have to work around the stigma associated with the word ‘socialism’ in American politics before he could make further progress.
