{"id":2360,"date":"2016-01-19T09:01:41","date_gmt":"2016-01-19T17:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/facing-primary-fight-from-sanders-clinton-embraces-obama\/"},"modified":"2016-01-19T09:01:41","modified_gmt":"2016-01-19T17:01:41","slug":"facing-primary-fight-from-sanders-clinton-embraces-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/facing-primary-fight-from-sanders-clinton-embraces-obama\/","title":{"rendered":"Facing primary fight from Sanders, Clinton embraces Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

COLUMBIA, S.C.<\/strong> \u2014 Facing fresh campaign anxieties, Hillary Clinton is attaching herself to President Barack Obama, hoping to overcome liberal enthusiasm for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with a full-throated embrace of her one-time rival and boss.<\/p>\n

Central to that strategy: shoring up her standing with African-American voters who helped make Obama the first black president and who could determine her fate if she falters in the first-to-vote contests of Iowa and New Hampshire.<\/p>\n

Clinton, Sanders and former Maryland Gov. Martin O\u2019Malley marked Martin Luther King Jr. Day on the steps of the South Carolina statehouse \u2014 which, for the first time, was celebrated with no Confederate flag flying overhead. The event was replete with Obama\u2019s influence: as Clinton\u2019s two main challengers marched to the capitol, hundreds of faithful chanted the president\u2019s campaign mantra, \u201cFired Up. Ready to Go!\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201c(King) was counting on all of us to keep going after he was gone, to be a part of what President Obama calls the \u2018Joshua Generation,\u2019 carrying forward the holy work the heroes of the civil rights movement began,\u201d Clinton said.<\/p>\n

Clinton\u2019s alignment with Obama, who remains popular with Democrats, was on full display at Sunday night\u2019s final debate before the Iowa caucuses.<\/p>\n

Presenting herself as his heir-apparent, Clinton warned that Sanders\u2019 universal health care plan threatened to reopen a contentious debate with Republicans that could undermine the so-called \u201cObamacare\u201d law.<\/p>\n

\u201cTo start over again with a whole new debate is something that I think would set us back. The Republicans just voted last week to repeal the Affordable Care Act, and thank goodness, President Obama vetoed it and saved Obamacare for the American people,\u201d Clinton said.<\/p>\n

Sanders countered that his \u201cMedicare for all\u201d proposal was the natural evolution to the health care law, reminding Clinton that he played a role in its passage. \u201cI\u2019m on the committee that wrote the Affordable Care Act,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

When Sanders noted bluntly that he hadn\u2019t taken campaign contributions from Wall Street banks or lucrative speaking fees from Goldman Sachs \u2014 unlike Clinton \u2014 the former secretary of state tried to turn it into an attack on Obama.<\/p>\n

And she resurrected comments Sanders had made about Obama before his re-election, suggesting the president would have benefited from a primary challenge.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s criticized President Obama for taking donations from Wall Street and President Obama has led our country out of the great recession,\u201d Clinton said. \u201cSenator Sanders called him weak, disappointing. He even, in 2011, publicly sought someone to run in a primary against President Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clinton aides said Sanders, a self-identified democratic socialist who casts himself as above politics as usual, was undermining Obama\u2019s achievements by questioning the effectiveness of his party.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that he keeps saying that Democrats can\u2019t do things is just wrong,\u201d said Clinton campaign strategist Joel Benenson. \u201cDemocrats have gotten things done and they\u2019ve done it under a Democratic president who happens to be named Barack Obama.\u201d<\/p>\n

The rhetoric was a notable shift from several months ago, when Clinton frequently stressed that she was not running for Obama\u2019s third term.<\/p>\n

Republicans are taking careful note of the new strategy and hope to use Clinton\u2019s ties to Obama to undercut her with skeptical independents in the general election, should she win the nominations.<\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019 team says there\u2019s little daylight between the senator and Obama and note one major difference.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s only one candidate on that stage who ran against Barack Obama for president and it wasn\u2019t Bernie Sanders,\u201d said Tad Devine, a top Sanders adviser.<\/p>\n

Sanders\u2019 strategy aims to capitalize on strong finishes in Iowa and New Hampshire to propel him in the two remaining contests in February: Nevada and South Carolina. Polls show Clinton with a big lead in South Carolina, helped by black voters, but the state\u2019s electorate has shifted in the past based on the outcome in the early voting.<\/p>\n

Black voters make up more than half of the electorate in South Carolina\u2019s Feb. 27 primary and the question remains if Sanders, a 74-year-old white Vermont senator, can find new support within a black community against Clinton, whose husband was commonly referred to as the nation\u2019s first black president before Obama\u2019s rise.<\/p>\n

Obama has no plans to endorse a candidate in the Democratic primary. But Clinton has the backing of most of Obama\u2019s close-knit political operation, as well as many senior administration officials, offering the clearest indication of the president\u2019s own views.<\/p>\n

Obama and most of his advisers long ago put aside the animosity of the 2008 primary, though they still marvel at Clinton\u2019s occasional political tone deafness, including the email controversy that consumed her campaign last summer.<\/p>\n

Still, they gained respect for her during her tenure as secretary of state and see her as the Democrat most likely to protect Obama\u2019s domestic and foreign policy legacy.<\/p>\n

The president has far less of a personal relationship with Sanders, though the two have met privately.<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

Lerer reported from Charleston, South Carolina. AP White House correspondent Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n

__<\/p>\n

On Twitter follow Ken Thomas https:\/\/twitter.com\/KThomasDC and Lisa Lerer https:\/\/twitter.com\/llerer<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

COLUMBIA, S.C. \u2014 Facing fresh campaign anxieties, Hillary Clinton is attaching herself to President Barack Obama, hoping to overcome liberal enthusiasm for Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders with a full-throated embrace of her one-time rival and boss. Central to that strategy: shoring up her standing with African-American voters who helped make Obama the first black president […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[65],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-2360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2360\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2360"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=2360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}