Biden is staking his candidacy on a win in South Carolina in its Saturday primary, and judging by the applause in the audience, he’s still the favorite in the Palmetto State.
Bloomberg was the odd man out. The billionaire media mogul essentially bought his way onstage and took heavy criticism from Elizabeth Warren, who repeated her performance from last week’s debate in which she delighted in skewering him at every turn.
Here are the debate highlights
Rivals pile on Sanders
Sanders’ rivals wasted little time going after the frontrunner.
In their opening comments, Bloomberg told Sanders that “Russia is helping you get elected”; Warren insisted that she would make a better president than Bernie”; Steyer said that while Sanders has the right analysis of what’s wrong with the economy, “I don’t like his solutions”; and Biden invoked the nearby African American church where nine worshipers were killed by a white supremacist before highlighting Sanders’ repeated votes against the so-called Brady Bill gun control legislation.
“I’m hearing my name mentioned a little bit tonight,” Sanders said. “I wonder why.”
Warren blasts Bloomberg (again)
The question was about China building infrastructure. But Warren made sure it was all about her favorite topic: Bloomberg and his lack of disclosure.
“We know that Mayor Bloomberg has been doing business with China for a long time, and he is the only one on this stage who has not released his taxes,” she said. “He plans to release them after Super Tuesday. It is not enough to be able to say, ‘Just trust me on this.’ We have a president who said he was going to release his taxes after the election and refused to do this.”
Bloomberg said her characterization wasn’t fair.
“We’re doing it as fast we can,” he said. “We’ve complied with requirements for disclosure. When I was mayor of New York, we had tax returns out 12 years in a row, and we’ll do that in the White House.”
Steyer, the other billionaire onstage, chimed in.
“Mr. Bloomberg, I released my tax returns. That was easy to do,” Steyer said.
Biden popped in: “How many years?”
“Ten,” shot back Steyer.
Bernie calls Bibi a ‘racist.’
If elected president, Sanders would be the first Jewish person to occupy the White House. He also would be the first Democratic nominee who blasted the American Israel Public Affairs Committee as a platform for “bigotry” and called Israel’s leader, Benjamin Netanyahu, a racist.
“I am very proud of being Jewish. I actually lived in Israel for some months,” Sanders said. “But what I happen to believe is that, right now, sadly, tragically, in Israel, through Bibi Netanyahu, you have a reactionary racist who is running that country.”
Applause rang out, a sign of just how unpopular Netanyahu is with Democrats, many of whom consider him an arm of the Republican Party in Israel.
“I happen to believe that what our foreign policy in the Middle East should be about is absolutely protecting the independence and security of Israel, but you cannot ignore the suffering of the Palestinian people,” Sanders said. “We have got to have a policy that reaches out to the Palestinians and the [Israelis]. And in answer to your question, that will come within the context of bringing nations together in the Middle East.”
Sanders, Bidenspar over Cuba
Asked about his history of sympathizing with socialist governments in Cuba and Nicaragua, Sanders said he has “opposed authoritarianism all over the world” and argued his comments on Cuba were similar to what former President Barack Obama has said.
“Occasionally, it might be a good idea to be honest about American foreign policy, and that includes the fact that America has overthrown governments all over the world, in Chile, in Guatemala, in Iran, and when dictatorships, whether it is the Chinese or the Cubans, do something good, you acknowledge that,” Sanders said.
Biden said Obama “did not in any way suggest that there was anything positive about the Cuban government.”
He continued: “He in fact does not, did not, has never embraced an authoritarian regime and does not now.”
Buttigieg chimed in shortly after, adding he isn’t looking forward to a general election that “comes down to Donald Trump with his nostalgia for the social order of the 1950s and Bernie Sanders with a nostalgia for the revolutionary politics of the 1960s.”
“This is not about what coups were happening in the 1970s or ’80s,” he continued. “This is about the future. This is about 2020.”
Sanders asked Buttigieg if “health care for all … is some kind of radical, communist idea.” Then the two shouted over each other for the next 30 seconds. “One at a time,” a moderator interjected, to no avail. When the cross-talk finally stopped, Klobuchar was given a chance to speak.
Biden’s farcical gun stat
While boasting about his gun control record, Biden said he beat the National Rifle Association twice, passing an assault weapons ban and legislation that required waiting periods for gun purchases. From there, he pivoted to attacking Sanders’ record giving immunity to gun manufacturers.
“My friend to my right and others, in fact, also gave into the gun manufacturers — absolute immunity,“ Biden said. „Imagine if I stood here and said, ‘We would give immunity to drug companies. We would give immunity to tobacco company that has caused carnage on our streets.”
That’s when Biden blew it: “150 million people have been killed since 2007 when Bernie voted to exempt the gun manufacturers from liability. More than all the wars, including Vietnam, from that point on. Carnage on our streets.”
For the record, that’s impossible. There’s no way that many people in a nation of 330 million people have been killed in that time frame. Gun deaths since 2007 have averaged about 33,000 yearly, including suicides.
Tommy come lately?
Biden had been relatively quiet at the beginning of the debate but decided to speak out against a target he had never before pursued: Steyer, who has spent huge sums in South Carolina, threatening Biden’s lock on the state.
Calling Steyer, “my good friend at the end of this platform,” Biden said the billionaire once “bought a system that was a private prison system after — after he knew that, in fact, what happened was they hog tied young men in prison here in this state. They, in fact, made sure that in Georgia they did not have health care for the people who were being held. … After he knew that, he bought it. And then he said he was proud of his accomplishment.”
When the moderators tried to cut him off, Biden got feisty: “I’m not out of time. You spoke overtime and I’m going to talk!” Cheers and applause rang out.
Steyer denied the charges from Biden, saying, “I bought stock in a prison company thinking they did a better job, and I investigated, and I sold it.”
Biden: “You knew when you bought it they’d done that.”
Steyer said he has fought to end private prisons and started a bank to support black, Latino and female business owners. “I have worked tirelessly on this, and you know I’m right,” Steyer said. “You wrote the crime bill …”
Biden then cut him off.
“Where we come from that’s called Tommy come lately,” Biden said, upending the phrase Johnny come lately.
Steyer, infuriated, pointed at Biden and accused him of making a “an absolute unfair statement.”
Berning down the House majority?
Buttigieg called out Sanders for what he called the Vermont senator’s “incredible shrinking price tag” for his „Medicare for All“ proposal.
“I’ll tell you exactly what it adds up to: It adds up to four more years of Donald Trump, Kevin McCarthy as speaker of the House and the inability to get the Senate into Democratic hands,” Buttigieg said.
Then he tore into Sanders’ electability, casting his nomination as all but a guarantee of losses at the presidential level and in key House and Senate races that could determine the control of each chamber.
“The time has come for us to stop acting like the presidency is the only office that matters,” Buttigieg said, emphasizing the importance of maintaining control of the House and winning back the Senate. “Look, if you want to keep the House in Democratic hands, you might want to check with the people who actually turned the House blue: 40 Democrats who are not running on your platform. They are running away from your platform as fast as they possibly can.”
Bloomberg goes to Russia
The debate kicked off the same way the last one did: with Bloomberg taking shots and returning fire.
It all started when Sanders was asked how a Democratic socialist could win on the economy against President Donald Trump when unemployment is so low. Sanders didn’t missed a beat, saying, “The economy is doing really great for people like Mr. Bloomberg and other billionaires.” He pointed to grim statistics about the low wages, homelessness and people struggling with debt.
That’s when Bloomberg accused Sanders of being a stooge of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“Vladimir Putin thinks that Donald Trump should be president of the United States, and that’s why Russia is helping you get elected: So that you lose to him,” Bloomberg told Sanders.
Sanders wasn’t pleased.
“Ohhhhh, Mr. Bloomberg!” Sanders cut in. “Let me tell Mr. Putin, OK, I’m not a good friend of the president.”
Sanders obliquely pointed out Bloomberg had once said Chinese President Xi Jinping isn’t a dictator, saying, “I think President Xi is an authoritarian leader.”
Source: politico.com
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