{"id":29473,"date":"2015-10-13T18:17:40","date_gmt":"2015-10-14T01:17:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spijue.wpengine.com\/news\/clinton-sanders-rivalry-in-spotlight-as-democrats-debate\/"},"modified":"2015-10-13T18:17:40","modified_gmt":"2015-10-14T01:17:40","slug":"clinton-sanders-rivalry-in-spotlight-as-democrats-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/news\/clinton-sanders-rivalry-in-spotlight-as-democrats-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"Clinton, Sanders rivalry in spotlight as Democrats debate"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 <\/strong>Hillary Rodham Clinton says she always expected tough competition in the Democratic presidential primary. It\u2019s likely she didn\u2019t expect it would come from Bernie Sanders, the rumpled independent senator from Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist calling for \u201cpolitical revolution.\u201d<\/p>\n

The surprise rivalry between Clinton and Sanders will be at the forefront as Democrats take the stage Tuesday in Las Vegas for the party\u2019s first debate of the 2016 campaign. The senator and the former secretary of state will be joined by a trio of candidates who occupy the basement of early polls, each looking to change their fortunes with a breakout moment in prime time.<\/p>\n

For months, Clinton and Sanders have circled each other cautiously and avoided personal attacks. But in recent days, both have shown that their preference to focus on policy doesn\u2019t mean they won\u2019t find ways to jab at each other.<\/p>\n

Sanders, who has filled arenas with crowds in the thousands and matched Clinton\u2019s fundraising take in the past three months, has cast the former secretary of state as a late-comer to the liberal positions he\u2019s held for decades on education, the environment and the economy.<\/p>\n

After Clinton announced her opposition to a sweeping Pacific Rim trade deal, a pact she had previously called the \u201cgold standard,\u201d Sanders said he was glad she\u2019d come to that conclusion. Then he added: \u201cThis is a conclusion I reached on day one.\u201d<\/p>\n

Indeed, Clinton has increasingly moved to the left on domestic policy since announcing her campaign this spring, including voicing opposition to the Keystone XL oil pipeline and support for expansive gun control legislation. While she rarely mentions Sanders by name, she\u2019s suggested her proposals are more realistic and well-formed than those espoused by the Vermont senator.<\/p>\n

In an interview with NBC\u2019s \u201cToday Show\u201d last week, Clinton took aim at Sanders call for free college tuition, a popular initiative among progressives.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a little different from those who say \u2018free college for everybody,\u2019\u201d Clinton said. \u201cI am not in favor of making college free for Donald Trump\u2019s kids.\u201d<\/p>\n

For Clinton, a policy-heavy debate would be a welcome reprieve from the months of focus on her use of personal email and a private server during her four years as secretary of state. The controversy has overshadowed virtually every other aspect of her campaign and contributed to a decline in her standing with voters.<\/p>\n

Maria Cardona, a Democratic strategist who worked for Clinton\u2019s failed 2008 White House campaign, said that as long as the email issue doesn\u2019t dominate the debate, \u201cthis will be a win for her no matter how you look at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hanging over Tuesday\u2019s contest will be the shadow of Vice President Joe Biden, who is flirting with a late entry into the Democratic field and is expected to announce his decision within days.<\/p>\n

While Biden\u2019s political advisers have been talking to potential staff and donors, he is not expected to upend the debate by revealing his political plans in the hours before the candidates take the stage.<\/p>\n

Despite the Biden speculation, the Democratic primary has lacked the drama of the Republican contest and the unexpected rise of Donald Trump. Debate host CNN has already said it expects significantly lower ratings for Tuesday\u2019s debate than the Republican contest the cable channel hosted in late September, which drew an audience of 23 million.<\/p>\n

White House spokesman Josh Earnest said he expected President Barack Obama to watch at least some of his party\u2019s debate.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think that he will watch it wire to wire \u2014 there is some pretty good playoff baseball on tonight,\u201d said Earnest, referring to the Major League Baseball playoffs.<\/p>\n

Even with smaller viewership than the GOP debates, Tuesday\u2019s event will be the largest audience for Democratic candidates since the primary race began. It\u2019s one of six debates the Democratic National Committee has sanctioned, a point of contention among some candidates seeking more nationally televised events to generate much needed attention.<\/p>\n

Leading the push for more debates is Martin O\u2019Malley, the former Maryland governor who sought to be Clinton\u2019s chief rival. O\u2019Malley has been sharply critical of what he sees as Clinton\u2019s flip-flopping on policy and has also said questions about her email use are legitimate.<\/p>\n

Democratic strategist Jim Manley said he expected O\u2019Malley to be aggressive in going after Clinton in the debate, mostly because it\u2019s his only chance to draw attention to his own campaign.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a chance for him to establish a rationale for his candidacy, which so far has been missing,\u201d Manley said.<\/p>\n

Also on stage will be former Virginia Sen. Jim Webb, a decorated Vietnam veteran who criticized Clinton for her early support of the Iraq war and could push her on her hawkish foreign policy positions Tuesday. Rounding out the five-person field is Lincoln Chafee, the Republican-turned independent-turned Democrat from Rhode Island whose most notable campaign moment thus far was his call for the U.S. to adopt the metric system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON \u2014 Hillary Rodham Clinton says she always expected tough competition in the Democratic presidential primary. It\u2019s likely she didn\u2019t expect it would come from Bernie Sanders, the rumpled independent senator from Vermont and a self-described democratic socialist calling for \u201cpolitical revolution.\u201d The surprise rivalry between Clinton and Sanders will be at the forefront as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":29474,"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-29473","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-nation-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29473","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=29473"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29473\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29474"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29473"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29473"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29473"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=29473"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}