Sanders and Clinton trade barbs at Democratic debate over foreign policy, race relations – as it happened

Closing remarks from Bernie Sanders:

And closing remarks from Hillary Clinton:

12 Feb 201623.05 EST

The hottest moments from tonight's Democratic presidential debate

Scott Bixby

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• Hillary Clinton, after defending her poor showing among female voters in New Hampshire, notes the historic nature of tonight’s debate - due, in part, to her own presence: “Somebody told me earlier today that we have had something like 200 presidential primary debates, and this is the first time in our history that there have been a majority of women on the stage, so we’ll take our progress wherever we can find it.”
• Bernie Sanders pushes his message of combating economic inequality as a key component of fighting racial inequality: “The African American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse,” Sanders said. “Clearly we are looking at institutional racism.”
• With both Sanders and Clinton aggressively courting Latino voters in the upcoming Nevada caucuses, their exchange over who has been less faithful to the implementation of comprehensive immigration reform was an important one. Clinton went after Sanders’ “no” vote on comprehensive immigration reform under George W. Bush in 2007, which Sanders defended as a move encouraged by scores of liberal advocacy groups.
• Nobody anticipated former secretary of state Henry Kissinger being a topic of hot contention tonight, but after Sanders tied Clinton to the Nobel-winning, Cambodia-burning former diplomat, Clinton dropped this critique on the Vermont senator: “Journalists have asked who you do listen to on foreign policy, and we have yet to know who that is...”
• Clinton drops a well-tuned response to Sanders’ criticism of her vote in support of the Iraq War: “I don’t believe that a vote in 2002 is a plan to defeat ISIS in 2016.”

12 Feb 201622.56 EST

Closing statements from tonight's Democratic presidential debate

Scott Bixby

Bernie Sanders:

“One of us ran against Barack Obama - I was not that candidate. This has been a great debate - lot of interesting issues have come together. Let me conclude by just saying this: There is no president, in my view, not Hillary Clinton and not Bernie Sanders, who has the capability or the power to take on Wall Street, large campaign donors, the corporate media, the big money itnerests in this country alone. This campaign is not just about electing a president. What this campaign is about is creating a process for a political revolution in which millions of Americans, working people who have given up on the political process... tens of millios of people, together to demand that we have a government that represents all of us - and not just the one percent who today have so much economic and political power.”

Hillary Clinton:

“I am not a single-issue candidate, and I do not believe that we live in a single-issue country,” Clinton says. “Does Wall Street and big financial interests, along with drug companies, insurance companies, Big Oil, have too much influence? Right.” But even if that influence were to evaporate, other issues of inequality wouldn’t disappear. “We would still have LGBT people who get married on Saturday and get fired on Monday,” she says. “I don’t think our country can live up to its potential unless we give a chance to let every single American to live up to their potential/”

Madam Secretary, that is a low blow.”

Bernie Sanders, hitting Hillary Clinton when she hits him for hitting President Barack Obama.

Bernie Sanders’ campaign had a bullet in the chamber when it came to Henry Kissinger, it seems:

12 Feb 201622.42 EST

Lois Beckett

The more things change...

More on the relationship between Hillary Clinton and Henry Kissinger

The most direct link between Kissinger and Clinton is Robert Hormats, a former vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs who served as under-secretary of state for economic growth, energy and the environment from 2009 to 2013, while Clinton headed the Department of State. Hormats is currently vice-chairman of Kissinger Associates, the consulting firm founded by Kissinger.

12 Feb 201622.40 EST

Lois Beckett

Further to the questions of the relationship between Clinton and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, one can look to Clinton’s 2014 review of Kissinger’s book in which she describes just how friendly she is with him:

Kissinger is a friend, and I relied on his counsel when I served as secretary of state. He checked in with me regularly, sharing astute observations about foreign leaders and sending me written reports on his travels. Though we have often seen the world and some of our challenges quite differently, and advocated different responses now and in the past, what comes through clearly in this new book is a conviction that we, and President Obama, share: a belief in the indispensability of continued American leadership in service of a just and liberal order.

It’s easy to talk to your friends - it’s harder to talk to your enemies.”

Bernie Sanders, on diplomacy.

12 Feb 201622.38 EST

Lucia Graves

When a moderator asked a fear-baiting question about whether we’re prepared for the next threat (which, when you think about it, is sort of like asking candidates to predict the next national security threat) Clinton came alive, giving her most animated response on national security to date.

She reeled off an impressively long list of what needs to be done in the Middle East from supporting the American air campaign to supporting Arabs and Kurds on the ground.

Meanwhile Sanders returned to the thing he always returns to: his 2003 vote against going to war in Iraq, arguing (as he has previously) that it underscores how experience doesn’t translate to good judgement with regard to foreign policy.

His point wasn’t particularly well received by the audience, (tepid applause) and Clinton had a strong retort: “I do not believe a vote in 2002 is a plan to defeat ISIS in 2016.”

After victory in New Hampshire and a strong showing in Iowa, Sanders will have to do better on foreign policy if he wants to be a credible commander in chief.

Bernie Sanders emphasizes Hillary Clinton’s relationship with former secretary of state and improbable Nobel laureate Henry Kissinger, whose support for military actions in Cambodia have made him a bête noire of the American left:

...with Clinton’s sick burn (bern?) at 1:11.