7 Best Moments From Last Democratic Debate, Including Sanders Unflinching Criticism Of Israel

Best Pax Posts On Bernie Sanders

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The 6 Best Moments From the Democratic Debate in New York

Fireworks.

—By Patrick Caldwell

| Fri Apr. 15, 2016

Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders met in Brooklyn Thursday night for the latest debate of the presidential season. The two Democrats have grown increasingly confrontational in recent weeks, as Sanders has run up a streak of electoral victories but has largely failed to shrink Clinton's pledged delegate lead. Sanders hasquestioned whether Clinton is "qualified" to be president. Clinton, meanwhile, has repeatedly mocked an interview Sanders gave to the New York Daily News, arguing that it showed a lack of understanding of key issues.

Here are some of the highlights from Thursday's debate.

Fireworks over who's qualified to be president. The debate immediately turned quarrelsome. CNN's Wolf Blitzer opened with a question about whether Sanders stands by his attacks on Clinton's qualifications. "Does Secretary Clinton have the experience and intelligence to be president? Of course she does," Sanders said. "But I do question her judgment. I question a judgment which voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country." Sanders also said he was concerned about Clinton's judgment when it comes to her past support for controversial trade deals and the assistance she is receiving from super-PACs.

"Senator Sanders did call me unqualified," Clinton shot back. "I've been called a lot of things in my life. That was a first."

Clinton doesn't want to talk about her Wall Street speeches. During the debate, CNN moderator Dana Bash tried to pin down Clinton on why she has so far refused to release the transcripts of paid speeches she gave to Goldman Sachs. "If there's nothing in those speeches that you think would change voters' minds," Bash asked, "why not just release the transcripts and put this whole issue to bed?"

Clinton did everything she could to dance away from answering the question—even after repeated follow-up questions. "There are certain expectations when you run for president," Clinton said. "This is a new one. And I've said, if everybody agrees to do it—because there are speeches for money on the other side [from the Republican candidates]. I know that." Clinton then tried to change the topic, criticizing Sanders for not yet releasing his tax returns. (Sanders responded by promising to release them soon.)

Not a laughing matter. Throughout the campaign, Clinton has used Sanders' record of opposing gun control measures to attack him from the left. Thursday's debate was no different. When the moderators teed up a question for her about Sanders' stance on the issue, Clinton grew solemn—while Sanders nervously laughed at the question. "It's not a laughing matter," Clinton said, sternly rebuking her opponent. "Ninety people on average a day are killed or commit suicide or die in accidents from guns, 33,000 people a year. I take it really seriously because I have spent more time than I care to remember being with people who have lost their loved ones."

Clinton comes out for a $15 minimum wage, of sorts. While Sanders has been quite clear about his stance on the minimum wage—he wants it to be $15 per hour, nationwide—Clinton has offered a more nuanced take. She's recently praised places such as New York and California that have bumped up their minimum wage to $15. But last summer, she said she'd rather set the national floor at $12 while allowing individual states and cities to enact higher minimums.

On Thursday, Clinton said she'd be willing to sign a $15 per hour minimum wage bill if Congress passed one—but she also said she'd still initially push for $12. "If you look at it," she said, "we moved more quickly to $15 in New York City, more deliberately toward $12, $12.50 upstate, then to $15. That is exactly my position. It's a model for the nation and that's what I will do as president."

A tussle over the '94 crime bill. The 1994 crime bill—signed by Bill Clinton, advocated by Hillary Clinton, and voted for by Sanders—has become a major issue in the current campaign. Two decades after the law passed, critics have faulted it for helping expand the country's system of mass incarceration. When asked whether she wanted to apologize for the crime bill, Clinton said, "I'm sorry for the consequences that were unintended and that have had a very unfortunate impact on people's lives." She also noted that her first speech of the campaign focused on criminal justice reform. "I want white people to recognize that there is systemic racism," she said. "It's also in employment, it's in housing, but it is in the criminal justice system, as well."

That didn't seem good enough for Sanders. When the moderators turned to him and asked why he had recently criticized Clinton's use of the term "superpredator" when the crime bill was debated in the '90s, Sanders didn't mince words. "Because it was a racist term, and everybody knew it was a racist term," Sanders said.

Sanders says supporting Palestinian rights doesn't make him anti-Israel.Something surprising happened Thursday night: a thoughtful, nuanced discussion of the Israel-Palestinian conflict. The moderators pushed Sanders on whether he stood by his statement that Israel's military strikes in Gaza in 2014 were "disproportionate." Sanders didn't back down, noting his personal relationship to the Jewish state but criticizing how it treats Palestinians. "I believe the United States and the rest of the world have got to work together to help the Palestinian people," Sanders said. "That does not make me anti-Israel."

PATRICK CALDWELL

Reporter

Patrick Caldwell is a reporter in Mother Jones’ DC bureau. E-mail any and all tips to pcaldwell [at] motherjones [dot] com. 

Bernie and Hillary Just Did Something We Thought We’d Never See

It finally happened.

—By Rebecca Leber

| Fri Apr. 15, 2016

Ira Cvetnaya/Shutterstock

The story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of theClimate Desk collaboration.

Savor it, climate hawks. Global warming had its short and sweet 15 minutes of fame in the ninth—and likely final—Democratic primary debate on Thursday night.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton had an intense exchange at the CNN/NY1 debate that got to the heart of the two candidates' different philosophies on climate action. Not only did they scuffle over a topic that has been in the headlines recently—Clinton's donations from fossil fuel interests—but they also got into it over Clinton's support for fracking as secretary of state, the merits of a carbon tax, the Paris climate agreement, and the role of nuclear energy.

Here are the highlights:

They agree climate change is a problem: Clinton's first point on the topic was that "we should talk about it in terms of the extraordinary threats that climate change poses to our country and our world." And Sanders said, "You know, if we, God forbid, were attacked tomorrow, the whole country would rise up and say we got an enemy out there and we got to do something about it. That was what 9/11 was about. We have an enemy out there, and that enemy is going to cause drought and floods and extreme weather disturbances."

But they have different philosophies about how to address it: Clinton's bottom line was that she'll stay the course set by the Obama administration, particularly on the Paris climate agreement and power plant regulations. "President Obama moved forward on gas mileage; he moved forward on the Clean Power Plan," she said. "He has moved forward on so many of the fronts that he could, given the executive actions that he was able to take."

"It's easy to diagnose the problem," said Clinton. "It's harder to do something about the problem."

These accomplishments deserve support, she argued, particularly as they've come in the face of hostility from a GOP-controlled Congress. She added, "It's easy to diagnose the problem. It's harder to do something about the problem."

But Sanders wants to think bigger when it comes to climate politics. "This is a difference between understanding that we have a crisis of historical consequence here," he said. "Incrementalism and those little steps are not enough. Not right now. Not on climate change."

On a carbon tax: Sanders, who has co-sponsored a carbon tax bill and called for it as part of his platform, kept pressing Clinton on whether she supports such a tax. His opponent never exactly answered. She pointed to her clean-energy proposals to build on the Clean Power Plan, saying, "I don't take a back seat to your legislation that you've introduced that you haven't been able to get passed. I want to do what we can do to actually make progress in dealing with the crisis."

On fossil fuel contributions: Moderator Wolf Blitzer asked Clinton about Sanders' charge that she's in the pocket of the fossil fuel industry. She responded, "We both have relatively small amounts of contributions from people who work for fossil fuel companies…But, that is not being supported by Big Oil, and I think it's important to distinguish that."

"Incrementalism and those little steps are not enough," argued Sanders. "Not right now. Not on climate change."

On fracking: Sanders opposes fracking and called attention to Clinton's record in the State Department of pushing fracking abroad and promoting natural gas as a climate change solution. Clinton called natural gas "one of the bridge fuels" to cleaner energy—a comment that's sure to make fracking opponents cringe. "For both economic and environmental and strategic reasons, it was American policy to try to help countries get out from under the constant use of coal, building coal plants all the time, also to get out from under, especially if they were in Europe, the pressure from Russia, which has been incredibly intense," she said. "So we did say natural gas is a bridge. We want to cross that bridge as quickly as possible, because in order to deal with climate change, we have got to move as rapidly as we can."

On nuclear: Moderator Errol Louis asked Sanders how he expects to address climate change if he supports phasing out both natural gas and nuclear energy, considering that the latter provides 20 percent of US power. Sanders admitted, "You certainly don't phase nuclear out tomorrow," and pointed to his 10 million solar roofs program.

This is probably the only time we'll see climate change get so much attention in a presidential debate this year. Too bad it didn't happen earlier in the campaign season, but better late than never.