What we learned
What we learned from the sixth Democratic debate, held in Flint, Michigan, just days before the state votes in a key primary for Bernie Sanders’s hopes to compete with Hillary Clinton for their party’s presidential nomination:
- In the most aggressive of any Democratic debate, Clinton and Sanders fought most over bailouts, Wall Street and controversial trade agreements, which the former secretary of state said were necessary and the leftwing Vermont senator described as deals with the devil. Perhaps feeling the pressure of Clinton’s enormous lead in the race, Sanders sharply interrupted her several times, and occasionally joked bitterly about their differences. “I’m very glad,” he said at about Clinton’s dithering over one trade deal, “that Secretary Clinton discovered religion on this issue.”
- But on bailouts for banks and the auto industry during the 2008 financial crisis, Clinton and Sanders could not agree. The senator said the government should never have rescued the banks who helped destroy the economy, while the former secretary of state argued that it was a “hard choice” but necessary to save the collapsing auto industry.
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The candidates battled over whether the 1990s really were as dreamy as many people think. Clinton conceded that parts of a tough-on-crime law signed by her husband were “a mistake” that left a legacy of injustice for African Americans, and Sanders walked back some of his old stances on gun control. “So when we talk about the 90s, you’re right, a lot of good things happened,” he said, “but a lot of bad things happened.”
- Sanders also urged Clinton to release copies of the speeches she gave to Wall Street, for which Wall Street gave her millions of dollars. Clinton said she would release transcripts when everyone did, to which Sanders threw his arms in the air: “Here it is! There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches on Wall Street.”
- In a sign of the wonkish quality of the debate, one of the angriest moments came during an argument over the Import-Export Bank, which Sanders denounced as “corporate welfare” to major corporations such as Boeing and Caterpillar. Clinton pitched herself the pragmatist; she argued that the bank also helps small businesses, and gives American companies a necessary edge abroad.
- The rivals waxed thoughtful on race and religion, with Clinton saying she “can’t pretend to have the experience” of black Americans, but that conversations in the last year had helped her “think about what it is to have to talk with your kids, scared that your sons or daughters even could get in trouble for no reason”.
- Asked about his faith, Sanders said a moral compulsion drove him to public office. “Being Jewish is so much of who I am,” he said. “Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust. I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean.”
- Clinton for the first time called for Michigan governor Rick Snyder to resign, and said anyone implicated by a full investigation into Flint’s lead-tainted water crisis should similarly lose their job. She also said federal and state money should go not just to emergency water supplies but to repair infrastructure and train residents about safe water.
- Climate change appeared only briefly – Sanders opposes all fracking, Clinton wants stringent regulation – and immigration went unmentioned. But Donald Trump got airtime, and was promptly repudiated by both candidates. Clinton said she would not “get into the gutter” with Trump’s “bigotry” or that of anyone else, and Sanders joked that Republicans needed treatment for their mental health.
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Sanders won the Maine caucuses by double digit margins over Clinton, delivering 15 delegates to the senator and seven to the former secretary of state. Clinton now has 1,129 of 2,383 delegates necessary to secure the nomination, while Sanders has 498.
- And on the Republican side of the ballot, Senator Marco Rubio swept all 23 delegates at stake in Puerto Rico – but still trails Donald Trump and Ted Cruz by more than 200 and nearly 150 delegates respectively.
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Campaign financing came up a lot tonight. That’s no surprise, as Sanders pivots back to it at every opportunity. Elizabeth Wurtzel thinks that Clinton’s position on Citizens United is undermined by the large donations she receives from Super Pacs.
The US supreme court decided that money is expression. Sanders is correct. Because Hillary Clinton has taken money from this one and that one, she is affected.
Clinton says she will of course be tough on Wall Street anyway, or whoever it is.
But no, she is not disinterested. That is why in most situations, when people are being serious, it is not enough to reveal a conflict of interest – you must not have one at all.
The only way to make good decisions about what is best is to not take money from anyone who cares about the outcome.
Closing statements
Sanders: We’re here in Flint because of systemic failures in government and the private sector. What’s happening here is happening all around the US. With all due respect to Secretary Clinton, it’s too late for establishment politics and establishment economics. We’ve got to take back the government that’s supposed to represent us.
Clinton: I see the results of systemic racism every single day. I want to take on the barriers of systemic racism. I’ll do whatever I can as Democratic nominee to run a campaign you can be proud of. I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whomever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights, to set big goals, to make clear that America’s best days are ahead of us.
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What about God?
A woman in the audience asks both Sanders and Clinton about faith. To whom do they pray, and for whom, and why?
Sanders says his Judaism is extremely important to him. “I think when we talk about God,” whether it is Christianity or Judaism or Buddhism or Islam, “what we are talking about is what all religions hold dear, and that is to do unto others what you’d like them to do unto you.”
I’m running for president … because I believe that. Because I believe morally and ethically we do not have the right to turn our backs on children in Flint, Michigan, or parents who are being poisoned, or veterans who are out on the street.
I want you to worry about my grandchildren, and I promise you I will worry about your family. We are in this together.
He adds, more specifically, that “I am very proud to be Jewish, and being Jewish is so much of who I am. Look, my father’s family was wiped out by Hitler in the Holocaust.”
I know about what crazy and radical, and extremist politics mean. I learned that lesson as a tiny, tiny child when my mother would take me shopping, and we would see people working in stores who had numbers on their arms because they were in Hitler’s concentration camp.
Clinton is less specific. “I pray very specifically for people whom I know, by name, people who have either have gone through [difficulties], disappointment, all of the life experiences that confront most of us.”
I pray for the will of God to be known, so that we can know it and to the best of our limited ability try to follow it and fulfill it. I have said many times that I am a praying person and if I hadn’t been, during the time i was in the White House, I would’ve become one. … Because it’s very hard to imagine living under that kind of pressure without being able to fall back on my faith.
She concludes: “I pray on a pretty regular basis during the day, because I need that strength and I need that support.”
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Donald Trump appears in spirit
The elephantine candidate in the room makes an appearance. How would you run against Donald Trump.
Clinton: “Let me start by saying, last time I chekced, as of last night, Donald Trump had received 3.6 million votes, which is a good number. Only one candidate in either party who has more than that number of votes and that’s me. I’m building a broad, diverse coalition across the country.
I think that Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people. So I will look forward to engaging him, you know, because I don’t think we have to start to make America great again, we have to make to whole again … We have to end the divisiveness.”
Senator Sanders, Trump has called you a communist. What do you say?
Sanders: “That was one of the nice things he’s said about me.”
I would love to run against Donald Trump, and I’ll tell you why. For a start but almost, not all, but almost every poll has shown that Sanders v Trump does a lot better than Clinton vs Trump.
He adds that he’s excited because his “campaign is generating excitement,” another reason he thinks he’d beat the billionaire.
“I think we are exciting working class people, young people, who are prepared to stand up and have a government that represents all of us and not just the few.”
Meanwhile, “payed”.
All of the phony T.V. commercials against me are bought and payed for by SPECIAL INTEREST GROUPS, the bandits that tell your pols what to do
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 7, 2016
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A spat over campaign finance – Clinton’s wealthy donors and Super Pac support vs Sanders’ army of small contributions – briefly turns toward the Republicans.
“You know we have our differences, and we get into vigorous debate on issues,” Clinton says. “But compare the substance of this debate with what you saw on the Republican stage last week.”
Sanders does a joke: “We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot into mental health, and if you watch these Republican debates, you’re going to know why…”
He says one of his top priorities would be to overturn the Citizens United decision that opened the floodgates of big money in campaigns.
Fracking: regulate it v ban it
Fracking. Do you support it?
Clinton: “I don’t support it where any locality or any state is against it, number one. I don’t support it where release of methane or contamination of water is present … Unless we can require where anybody who fracks can tell us exactly what chemicals they use.”
In short: “I do not think there will be many places in America where fracking will continue to take place.”
Sandesr: “My answer is a lot shorter. No, I do not support fracking.”
He adds that he’s glad somebody mentioned climate change, because it’s not being talked about enough. “If we don’t get our act together, the climate that we’re going to live our children may not be healthy or habitable.”
Cooper points out that plenty of Democratic leaders say fracking can be safe. Sanders says they’re wrong.
“I talk to scientists who tell me that fracking is doing terrible things to water across the country.” He says the US has to develop new energy sources and systems, “and we’ve got to do it yesterday.”
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Don Lemon asks about infrastructure. Clinton says she likes it.
“I want to start a national infrastructure bank,” Clinton says. “There’s no doubt, we have to do more on our bridges, our tunnels, our roads, our airports … We have pipelines that are leaking, that are dangerous. We have so much work to be done and I think we can put millions of people to work.”
Lemon asks Sanders about whether his $1tn-plan is at all feasible – if Obama’s plan has failed to get going, how will yours?
“I’ll tell you how we’re gonna pay for that. Profitable corporations are stashing their profits in the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, and other tax havens,” he says. “I will eliminate that outrageous loophole, and we will raise a trillion dollars. … A trillion dollars over five years creates 13 million good paying jobs.”
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Sanders goes past Clinton, saying that when public schools work they work so well that higher education should be free too.
I believe that every public college and university in this country should be tuition free, so that your child, regardless of the income of your family knows that if she studies hard, she is going to be able to go to college.
He says he wants well-paid childcare workers, too (which was one of Barack Obama’s priorities that has fallen by the wayside in recent years).
Clinton takes the question, saying she would reinstate federal funding for repairing and modernizing public schools.
I would use every legal means at my disposal to try to force the governor and the state to return the schools to the people of Detroit. To end the emergency management, which, if you look at the data, has made things worse!
She then suggests “a kind of education Swat team” of teachers and administrators. “When Detroit gets back to schools they should have all the help they can get.”
CNN: do you think unions protect bad teachers?
Clinton says she’s proud to have been endorsed by two huge teachers unions. “We’ve had really candid conversations,” she says, about helping kids who have “more problems than just academic problems.”
“A lot of people have been blaming and scapegoating teachers because they don’t want to put the money in the school system.”
CNN: so… about the question?
Clinton: “You know what I have told my friends at the top of both unions that we have to take a look at this, because it is one of the most common criticisms, and we need to eliminate that criticism.
“Teachers do so much good, they are often working under the most difficult circumstances, so anything that could be changed, I want them to look at.”
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There’s been a lot of discussion about the 1990s in this debate. Guardian US columnist Richard Wolffe wonders what else is going to come up on this trip down memory lane.
First it was the reunion of the cast of Friends, then it was the Democratic debate. It’s safe to say the 1990s are well and truly back in fashion, at least judging from the amount of time spent assessing the relative merits of the 1990s economy, welfare reform, Nafta and the 1994 crime bill.
All that’s left is a discussion about that other 90s political story about a White House intern. So far Bernie Sanders, who has been leading the re-examination of the 1990s, hasn’t gone there.
Sanders fields the question first:“A nation is judged not by how it treats the millionaires but by how it treats its most vulnerable, the children and the elderly, and we should be ashamed!”
Kemp nods, “thank you.”
Sanders then turns it into a tirade against Republicans, who says “we have got to change our national priorities: no more tax breaks for billionaires and corporations. We are going to invest in our children and have the best public school system in the world.”
Cooper asks where exactly fixing Detroit schools ranks in Sanders’ priorities?
“Everybody in this room should be embarrassed by this: we have the highest rate of childhood poverty of any industrialized country – that is a disgrace!”
He doesn’t really say where it ranks in his priorities. Taxes on the wealthiest will pay for it, he suggests.
Shoniqua Kemp, another Michigan local, asks Sanders about schools: “Our students can no longer suffer with a lack of [materials] or logistical issues … who’s going to step up?”
“My daughter cannot wait eight more years for success to take place.”
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Mid-debate, Sanders’ campaign has released a statement about his victory in Maine.
“I thank the people of Maine for their strong support. With another double-digit victory, we have now won by wide margins in states from New England to the Rocky Mountains and from the Midwest to the Great Plains.
“This weekend alone we won in Maine, Kansas and Nebraska. The pundits might not like it but the people are making history. We now have the momentum to go all the way to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia.”
The dream of the 90s
The 1990s come back. Clinton says that her husband’s policies helped lift record numbers of people out of poverty, and have helped millions.
Sanders says he doesn’t disagree entirely, and that he supported many of then president Bill Clinton’s proposals. But he adds: “We deregulated Wall Street” and trade agreements like “Nafta had a horrendous impact”, which he argues had a disproportionate effect on African Americans.
He says he voted against Wall Street deregulation, and those agreements.
“So when we talk about the 90s, you’re right, a lot of good things happened, but a lot of bad things happened” he concludes.
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Sanders says he wants to build “on the work that President Obama has done”: Justice Department investigations, ending the militarization of local police departments, making local police departments look like the communities they serve, drugs as a health issue rather than a criminal one.
Finally, Clinton is asked about her use of the phrase “super predators” in the 1990s to describe drug dealers, which many people heard as racially charged. Clinton says it was “a poor choice of words” that “I would not use it again”.
“I was speaking about drug cartels and criminal activity that was very concerning.”
Lemon asks the candidates what their “blind spots” are with respect to race.
“I know I have never had the experience that so many people in American and this audience have had,” Clinton starts.
She says she would “urge white people to think about what it is to have to talk with your kids, scared that your sons or daughters even could get in trouble for no reason … and end up in a jail in Texas.
“And I have spent a lot of time with mothers of African American children, who have lost them. Trayvon Martin’s mother … It has been incredibly humbling, because I can’t pretend to have the experience that you have had and others have had. But I will do the best I possibly can to understand and empathize, but to tear down the institutional [barriers of racism].”
Sanders tells two brief anecdotes in his answer. “One of my first years in Congress I went down to a meeting in downtown Washington DC,” he says. “I saw him out later on and he was sitting there waiting, and I said let’s go out and get a cab. And he said, no, I don’t get cabs in Washignton DC. He was humiliated by the fact that cab drivers would go past him in Washington DC. This man did not take a cab 20 years ago in Washignton DC.”
Then he says that more recently, a “young lady comes up to me and she says you don’t understand what police do in certain black communities … You don’t understand the degree to which we are terrorized … I’m not just talking about the terrible shootings … I’m just talking about every day activities where police officers are bullying.”
He says he agrees with Clinton: “When you’re white you don’t know what it’s like to be living in a ghetto. You don’t know what it’s like to be poor. You don’t know what it’s like to be hassled when you walk down the street or to be dragged out of a car.”
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A black resident of Flint asks Sanders about the new civil rights movement, and in particular why older civil rights leaders have flocked to Clinton more so than the senator.
Sander gives a brief summary of his time protesting with the civil rights movement in the 1960s. “Most candidates don’t usually put this on their resume but a year later I was arrested by the Chicago police for trying to desegregate schools … In 1963 on a very important day for me I went to the March on Washington for jobs and freedom with Dr King.”
He says he’s got the strongest plan to reform the criminal justice system.
Clinton gets a version of the question too. She says she too heard Dr Martin Luther King Jr speak (she was 14), and then, in law school, she had a grant to work on civil rights issues. “First thing she did was to send me to North Carolina, to investigate [imprisonment]. Second thing she did was to send me to Alabama, to investigate segregated academies.”
She says those experiences “lit a fire inside me to address systemic racism”.
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Don Lemon, a black CNN anchor, asks Clinton about criminal justice reform and the new generation of civil rights activists
My husband said at the NAACP last summer that [the 1990s criminal justice bill] solved some problems but it created other problems, and I agree. And one of those other problems unfortunately was a move to expand the reasons why people would be incarcerated.
Lemon: “Why should black people trust you this time to get people right?”
Clinton: “Well, Senator Sanders supported it as well, are you going to ask him the question?”
Clinton admits that some aspects of the bill were “a mistake”. She wants to “go after systemic racism that stalks the criminal justice system, ending private prisons, ending the incarceration of low-level offenders.”
Sanders gets a version of the question: why did he support that bill?
As we all know there are bills in Congress that have bad stuff. There are bills in Congress that have good stuff. Bad stuff and good stuff in the same bill.
Sanders is arguing that he can compromise.
In that bill there have been some good provisions. I have been a fierce fighter of domestic violence,” he gives as an example. “It was in that bill. The ban on assault weapons, what I’ve fought for my whole life, it was in that bill … I tried to get the death penalty aspects in that bill out. Secretary Clinton and I disagree on that. I was then and I am now opposed to the death penalty.”
The audience appreciates this line.
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He defends his record by saying that he voted for provisions in those bills that he thought were good, such as a ban on armor piercing bullets. “You’re looking at a guy who comes from a rural state with low gun control. I have a D-minus rating from the NRA.” He says he lost an election because he said he was for a ban on “military style” assault weapons. “People who should not have guns should not be able to buy guns in America.”
On the immunity law, he says he does not agree that gun-makers should necessarily be held legally liable. “You hold people, in terms of this liability thing. Where you hold manufacturers liability is if they understand that they’re selling guns to an area that is getting into the hands of criminals.”
“But if they’re selling a product into the hands of a person who is buying legally, you’re ending gun manufacturing in America.”
Clinton says the NRA stopped a bigger push to make guns safer, eg by making fingerprint or DNA locks. The immunity law was a huge push by the gun lobby, she argues – suggesting that the NRA has played some senators for fools.
“If somebody who is crazy or a criminal or a horrible person goes around shooting people, the manufacturer of that gun should be liable,” Sanders says is how he interprets the argument. “If that is the case, then essentially your position is there should not be any guns in America, period.”
Clinton: “That is what the NRA says my position is!”
Sanders: “Can I finish?”
Clinton turns back to the moderator and Sanders goes on: “You hold those people who used the guns accountable. You try to make guns as safe as possible, I would agree with that.”
Clinton passionately insists that families like those of Sandy Hook victims have a right to hold gun manufacturers responsible with their collective suit, and the audience applauds her emotional appeal. Cooper insists they move on.
Gun control and gun violence. The father of a shooting victim asks the candidates what it is that they would do.
“First of all I’m looking at your daughter and I’m very grateful she’s laughing and smiling and on the road to recovery,” Clinton begins.
“I think we have to try everything that works to limit the numbers of people and the kinds of people who are given access to firearms,” she goes on. “The Brady Bill has kept more than 2m purchases from going forward.”
But “not every killer will have the same profile. But the comprehensive background checks, closing the online loophole, closing the gunshow loophole, closing what’s called the Charleston loophole,” referring to the oversight by which a gunman acquired a gun last year before he killed nine people in Charleston, South Carolina.
“I also believe so strongly, that giving immunity to gun makers and sellers was a terrible mistake, because it removed any accountability from the gun-makers and the sellers.”
These are all thinly disguised barbs at Sanders, who has voted against background checks and in favor of giving immunity. He has since reversed his positions.
“Let’s be honest, nobody as a magic solution to this problem,” Sanders says. “Any lunatic tomorrow” could commit a mass shooting. “This is a tough issue, but we have go to do everything we possibly can to minimize the possibilities of these mass killings.”
The subject of Hillary Clinton’s Goldman Sachs speeches have come up again. Elizabeth Wurtzel thinks its time for her to release them.
Hillary Clinton should release the text of her Goldman Sachs speech. It is also absurd to say that money does not buy influence. Of course it does.
If it did not, there would be no Super Pacs. In fact, Barack Obama has not been hard on people in finance, no doubt because these are his people. So Hillary Clinton’s claim that Wall Street money did not affect Obama is ridiculous.
Our entire system is corrupted by it. That is perhaps Sanders’s only point, but it’s good.
He flips the “even-the-playing-field-abroad” argument and says that if Clinton wants to compare the US and other countries, most of the western world has universal healthcare. It’s the “one thing we should emulate”, he says.
Clinton says sure, we’re getting there thanks to Barack Obama.
“We have 90% coverage, we are lacking 10%. We’re going to stay on that path and we will get to universal coverage.”
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Candidates clash on 'corporate welfare' bank
Cooper points out that Sanders’s opposition to the bank puts him on the same side as Republican ultra-conservative Ted Cruz.
“I don’t want to break the bad news,” Sanders says. “Democrats are not always right. Democrats have often supported corporate welfare. Democrats have often supported disastrous trade agreements. And on this issue I do not agree with corporate welfare.”
He cites his work in Congress to make sure “20%” of the funds went to actual small businesses.
Clinton says that you can see the results of the Import-Export bank, and says 240 companies in Michigan have been helped by it, for instance. “If we’re going to compete and win in the global economy, we can’t let every other country support their country and we take a hands-off approach.”
Cooper fact-checks: Sanders is right, most of the money goes to Boeing and Caterpillar. “Do they really need this money?”
Clinton says yes, those huge corporations do. She says compared to Airbus, Boeing needs the assistance. It’s all about playing the field with international corporations, Clinton says, making sure that American companies can compete abroad.
“Isn’t it tragic,” Sanders waxes sarcastic, “oh absolutely, they need a handout from the American middle class.”
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Back on trade policy. Sanders bashes Nafta and trade agreements that he says gutted Michigan’s factories of jobs by freeing up business to work overseas.
“If we’re going to argue about the 1990s instead of talking about the future, which I much prefer,” Clinton says, let’s talk about the Import-Export bank, a government bank that Sanders opposes.
“I think we’re in a race for exports,” Clinton says. “China, Germany, everybody else supports their businesses … I favor that, he’s opposed it. I want to do everything I can for us to compete and win in the global economy.”
Sanders says that in Washington, the Import-Export bank is called “the bank of Boeing, because Boeing itself gets 40% of the money discharged by the Export-Import bank. 75% of the funds … goes to large, profitable corporations.”
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Sanders raises Clinton’s hefty speaking fees from Wall Street banks, which made her hundreds of thousands of dollars. He urges her to release what must have been “fantastic” speeches, so that Americans can judge the transcripts.
Clinton says she’ll gladly release them if everyone else does. Sanders says he’ll gladly comply.
“Here it is!” Sanders shouts, waving his arms in an abracadabra shrug. “There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches on Wall Street!”
Clinton contrasts her record with that of Barack Obama, who “took more money from Wall street in the 2008 campaign”. She says he had proven he could be tough on Wall Street by signing the Dodd-Frank Act, “the toughest regulation since the Great Depression.”
She insists she has a record of being tough on Wall Street, citing her past support for tougher penalties and saying that she will use “tools” in Dodd-Frank to prosecute malfeasance by executives.
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Competing bailouts: Wall St v auto industry
Clinton counters by saying Sanders did not support the stimulus to resurrect the American auto industry, which was part of the bailout money in the financial crisis in 2008.
“Well I want to talk about the Wall Street bailout,” Sanders says. Clinton jumps in.
Sanders: “Excuse me, I’m talking.”
Clinton: “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story.”
Sanders: “Let me tell my story, you tell yours.”
Clinton says she will.
Sanders says that Clinton was “voting for corporate America. Did I vote against the Wall Street bailout?”
Billionaires came to Congress in 2008, he says, and said: “Oh please, we’ll be good boys, bail us out.
“I said let the billionaires bail themselves out. And let’s help the middle class.”
Clinton says she wants “to set the record straight, I voted against the only multinational trade deal that came before me. I came out against the TPP. After it finished. I thought it was reasonable to know what it was about before I opposed it.”
She says she supported the bailout because it had “the $350m that was needed to restructure the auto industry.”
“You have to make hard choices when you’re in positions of responsibility … If everybody had voted the way he did, I believe the auto industry would have collapsed, taking four million jobs with it.”
Sanders counters that he was for the auto money and the stimulus: “Of course that made sense. And I strongly supported president Obama’s position.”
Is he a one-issue candidate? “I guess so. My one issue is trying to rebuild a disappearing middle class.”
Clinton maintains that she made the right call: “I voted to save the auto industry, and I’m very glad I did.”
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Cooper asks about the long-running jobs crisis in in Flint. Clinton says she wants to invest in small businesses, and growing jobs for women and in poor neighborhoods. Then she says she wants to make big companies who’ve left the area pay for their choices, citing Nabisco.
“I’m going to claw back those benefits. They’re going to have to pay back if they’re leaving a place that actually invested in them. I’m also going to go after companies like Johnson Controls in Wisconsin. They got part of the bailout … now they want to move some of their headquarters to Europe. They’re going to have to pay an exit fee.”
Sanders has a riposte: “I’m very glad, Anderson, that secretary Clinton discovered religion on this issue.”
He says she supported nearly every one of the “disastrous trade agreements”, such as Nafta (“tens of thousands of jobs”), trade relations with China, etc. He says he was
“You didn’t need a PhD in economics – American workers should not be forced to compete with people in Mexico making 25c an hour.”
Why shouldn’t the people of Flint believe you aren’t just using this crisis to score political points, a Flint resident asks Clinton.
The crowd applauds his question.
Clinton cites her long career of activism, from Arkansas to the White House to the Senate for New York. “This problem is one that is particularly outrageous and painful at the same time,” she says, going on to say that she’s connected with the parents and children whose suffering she’s seen with every visit to the city.
“I’m just determined to do whatever I can, so I have … you’ve got to get the federal money, you’ve got to get the state money, and I will be with Flint all the way through this crisis, in whatever capacity I am.”
Sanders gets the same question – the resident notes that the senator first arrived in Flint for the first time in the last couple weeks before the state’s primary.
“I met very quietly in Detroit with parents and others who were affected by this disaster, and the other thing I did was hold a town meeting,” he says, for hundreds of people to him what they wanted.
“At some point the TV cameras and CNN is going to disappear – applause – and then people are going to be left struggling.”
“All I can say is if you check my record going back a long time, I have stood with those who are hurting. I have stood with those who have no money. And I have stood up to nearly every powerful interest in the United States of America.”
Meanwhile, the governor has responded to the calls for his resignation from the Democratic debate.
I'm taking responsibility as our value system says we should. My track record is getting things done, and I want to get this done. #FlintFWD
— Governor Rick Snyder (@onetoughnerd) March 7, 2016
Back in the debate, where the candidates have yet to learn that Sanders has won Maine – they’re still talking about what exactly they would do about Flint, and whom would pay for the disaster.
“There has to be absolute accountability and I will support” whatever a investigation determines, Clinton says.
Senator Sanders, should people go to jail?
Sanders: “I can’t sit up here and make a judgment about whether somebody committed a criminal act.”
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Sanders wins Maine
The Vermont senator has won the Maine caucuses, per the Associated Press’ call of the race.
BREAKING: Bernie Sanders wins the Democratic presidential caucuses in Maine. @AP race call at 8 p.m. EST. #Election2016 #APracecall
— The Associated Press (@AP) March 7, 2016
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Cooper points out that government, which Sanders wants to grow, is what mismanaged Flint’s water. Sanders says who else is going to fix the situation?
“I suppose they could trust corporations that have destroyed Flint by a disastrous trade policy … We could trust them, oh sure. Or maybe, Anderson, tell you what maybe we should take Wall Street come in and run the city of Flint,” he says.
“No, we live in a democracy, and I’ll be the last person to deny the government is failing in many respects. But I would trust the people to choose a government that works for them.”
Clinton’s turn: she says she would launch an investigation into what happened in the state EPA offices where officials failed to act or warn others about the toxic water.
“Yes, people should be fired. How far up it went, I don’t know. … But they should be relieved.”
She points out that many cities around the US have skewed water reports, and also have dangerous levels of toxins.
Sanders’s turn: “President Sanders would fire anybody who knew what was happening and did not act according. A president Sanders would make the point that how does it happen in the wealthiest country in the history of the world.”
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Sanders’s turn on the question of specifics. “What is going on is a disgrace beyond belief. As president of the United States this is what I would do:
“If local government does not have the resources, if state government … refuses to act,” he says, “federal government comes in, federal government acts.
“Water rates have soared in Flint. You are paying three times more for poison water than I’m paying in Burlington, Vermont for clean water. First thing you do is say people are not paying a water bill for poison water. And that is retroactive.”
The he says the CDC has to intervene to examine every child and adult for degrees of lead poisoning. Finally he repeats the push for reconstructing infrastructure.
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A Flint resident asks Clinton what would she actually do.
“All the repair work that is being done, and mayor Weaver announced a program that we support to begin to help train people to do some of this work,” Clinton says.
“Everything that is done has to be triple checked to regain your trust and to hold those responsible … You bathe in it, you drink it, you wash food.”
“I will make sure as president that I double and triple check … I will work with elected officials that I trust, like your mayor” to make sure that basic necessities are available and safe.
Cooper presses her on what would she do as president, right now, if she could, and Clinton says she supports Barack Obama’s emergency support for the city. She adds that she supports the mayor’s program to get Flint residents themselves trained to fix the pipes and provide emergency aid immediately.
“I say amen to that,” Clinton says when it’s her turn. She adds that she too wants governor Rick Snyder to resign.
But “that is not enough. We have to focus on what must be done to help the people of Flint.”
She says she supports efforts to get money from the federal government to get money to repair infrastructure – and says that Michigan should also immediately use emergency funds immediately.
“What is more important of the health and wellbeing, particularly of children, it is raining lead in Flint! And the state is not coming forward.”
Clinton’s channeling some of Sanders’s righteous anger in this speech.
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Sanders is asked what he would do about Flint.
“Over the last several weeks I had the opportunity to meet with a number of residents of Flint,” he says. “What I heard and what I saw literally shattered me, and was beyond belief.”
He can’t believe that children are being poisoned in 2015 and 2016. “There’s a lot of blame to go around, and one of the points that I have made is I believe the governor of this state should understand that his dereliction of duty was irresponsible. He should resign.”
He goes on to say that what’s happening in Flint is happening around the country, and segues to say that millionaires and billionaires have too much influence while middle-class citizens are struggling. He says infrastructure needs to be revamped around the country.
“The wealthiest country in the history of the world has got to get its priorities right, take care of its people, no more tax cuts for billionaires.”
Cooper sets down the ground rules. Candidates have 1 minute and 15 sections per answer, and 30 seconds for a follow-up.
Audience members are Democrats and Flint residents whose questions have been reviewed so as not to repeat. Cooper gives a brief summary of how lead corroded into Flint’s pipes when state officials ordered residents to use toxic river water as a cost-cutting measure. You can read a deep dive on the story through the link below.
CNN’s Anderson Cooper has the mic and is introducing the candidates on stage. Bernie Sanders walks out first to raucous applause, followed by Hillary Clinton, who gets her own hardly insignificant ovation.
Cooper asks the room to take a moment of silence in honor of Nancy Reagan, the former first lady who died earlier Sunday. The assembled candidates and audience members bow their heads for a moment.
And then it’s the Flint City Wide Choir for the national anthem, to which Clinton and Sanders mouth the words.
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Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders at the #DemDebate pic.twitter.com/WJma9WeruO
— Paul Owen (@PaulTOwen) March 7, 2016
The Democratic debate is about to get started in Flint, Michigan, with Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton set to clash over Wall Street, foreign policy, campaign finance and other issues – all while the results of Maine’s Democratic caucuses roll in.
Both Clinton and Sanders have been campaigning hard in Michigan in recent days, with the former secretary of state visiting a string of churches on Sunday and both paying visits to the struggling city of Flint, where lead-tainted water has had residents suffering for nearly two years. The state, like Ohio and Florida in the coming weeks, is one of the key primary contests that could either keep Sanders in the race or lock Clinton’s lead for the Democratic nomination.
We’ll have both the action on stage and the Maine results here, so stick with us for the show.
Speaking of endorsements, Arnold Schwarzenegger, the Austrian bodybuilder, two-time barbarian and former governor of California, has endorsed his friend John Kasich for president. Ben Jacobs reports from Kasich’s home state of Ohio.
Schwarzenegger warmly endorsed Kasich, telling the crowd of almost 1,000: “We need John Kasich to now take charge and be in the White House. The former governor, who will replace Republican frontrunner Donald Trump as host of The Apprentice, described Kasich as “an action hero” who “kicked some serious butt” during his time in Congress.
Kasich celebrated the endorsement by wearing a “governator” jacket, which he said was a gift from Schwarzenegger. Kasich spent most of his speech sticking to his insistence on “a positive message” and avoiding “name calling and sliming”.
However, he did retell a favorite story about how he was “whining to [Schwarzenegger] about negative campaigning in Ohio” during Kasich’s first campaign for governor in 2010. He said the then-governor of California looked him straight in the eye and said: “Love the beatings. Love them.”
But, without winning a single state and with only a pair of second place finishes to his name so far, Kasich has had a lot of beatings to enjoy in the 2016 primary. However, while the Ohio governor is campaigning hard in Michigan’s primary on Tuesday, he has staked his entire campaign on the winner-take-all Ohio contest on 15 March, and Schwarzenegger’s endorsement added celebrity luster to hometown cred.
Mary Knight of Westerville, Ohio, praised Kasich as “a moderate” and noted: “What he says is sensible. He doesn’t say crazy things, over-the-top things, and grew up as a lower-middle-class person.”
Kasich, who was five points behind Trump in a recent poll of the state, just needed “to remind Ohio voters why they wanted him to be governor in first place,” Borges said. Kasich “can win, will win and everything changes when he carries Ohio.”
With all this organization behind him – at the rally on Sunday, a parade of Ohio Republicans including a former senator took the state to warm up the crowd – Kasich should be a favorite in his home state. However, with only one recent poll and a volatile electorate, anything could happen.
As Mary Knight told the Guardian: “This is the most difficult [election] to gauge because of that idiot Trump.”
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Bernie Sanders has struggled in the race to win endorsements compared to Hillary Clinton, who has racked up sitting members of Congress, former officials, civil rights veterans and celebrities.
Sanders has gathered more than a few celebrities, activists and former officials as well, most recently Hawaii representative Tulsi Gabbard, who quit a party post to support him, and maybe most prominently the rapper Killer Mike. But he’s just added one more: former senator Don Riegle.
Ahead of the debate in Flint, @BernieSanders announces endorsement from Don Riegle, former senator from Michigan. pic.twitter.com/XTJ7Iydnga
— Colleen Nelson (@ColleenMNelson) March 6, 2016
Riegle was a three-term senator and five-term representative – and with John McCain and John Glenn accused of corruption in 1989. He’s also gone into lobbying, one of the great bugbears of Sanders’ campaign. But Sanders might be relying on the fact that many of his supporters were too young (or not around) to remember that episode on congressional history.
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Nancy Reagan, the former first lady who profoundly influenced Ronald Reagan during his eight years in the White House, died on Sunday – casting a shadow across the many candidates in the race who invoke her husband’s name.
Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are almost certainly going to remark on Reagan’s death, and have already praised her activism (sometimes in opposition to other Republicans) in matters of gun control and stem cell research.
And though the 94-year-old kept quiet in recent years about what she thought of the modern Republican party, friends and family had reported that it wasn’t very much. Mitt Romney, the party’s nominee in 2012, channeled her spirit in a speech earlier this week to denounce frontrunner Donald Trump and some of the rebellious factions in the conservative movement. “With the passing of Nancy Reagan, we say a final goodbye to the days of Ronald Reagan,” he said earlier today.
Trump usually cites Reagan as part of his argument that a registered Democrat, like him, can transform into a beloved, “somewhat conservative” president. He tweeted on Sunday: “Nancy Reagan, the wife of a truly great president, was an amazing woman. She will be missed!”
Reagan’s biographer Bob Colacello wrote an appreciation for the former first lady as well, which you can read here.
Clinton and Sanders face off in Flint
Hello and welcome to our live coverage of the Democrats’ Maine caucus results and the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders since Super Tuesday and Super Saturday doled out hundreds of delegates for each candidate.
Eight of the 15 states that voted on those two days fell to Clinton, who won African Americans and older voters in landslide victories around the south. Seven states picked Sanders, but because delegates are distributed proportionally Clinton maintains a huge lead in the delegate count. Of 2,383 delegates needed to secure the nomination, Clinton has 1,121 and Sanders has 481.
Today Puerto Rico delivered a second victory to Marco Rubio, who won by enough of a margin to sweep the territory’s 23 delegates. Rubio has won only one state – Minnesota – since the election season began in early February, and with only 128 delegates trails frontrunner Donald Trump (382) and senator Ted Cruz (300) in the race to win 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination.
Trump’s vitriolic rhetoric about torture, immigrants and his rivals – who have descended into the mud with him – will loom large over tonight’s Democratic debate, where Sanders and Clinton are likely to use broad strokes to contrast themselves with Republicans.
But the Democratic race has quietly grown desperate for Sanders, who faces long odds in the states ahead.
He’ll likely try to draw sharper distinctions between himself and Clinton tonight: her history with big donors and Wall Street v his record-breaking small donations; her hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East v his reluctance to intervene; her “establishment” support (although he probably won’t mention her many endorsements from civil rights veterans) v his “political revolution” (although he may not talk about his struggle to turn out African Americans).
Above all of this will be the problems of the city where the two debate: Flint, Michigan, a city left with lead-tainted water, poisoned children, and nearly two years of neglect from the governor – a saga of poverty, race issues and official mismanagement that, my colleagues have found, extends well beyond the snowy shores of the Flint River.
The debate will be shown on CNN. Stay with us for live coverage from 8pm ET.
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