"And hearing their stories was so incredibly, profoundly heartbreaking. Each one of them, you know, describes their child, had a picture.
"[...] it's not just a question for parents and grandparents to answer. It's really a question for all of us to answer. Every single one of our children deserves the chance to live up to his or her god-given potential. And that's what we need to be doing to the best of our ability in our country."
For a comparison of candidates' plans on addressing racial issues see Campaign for America's Future's Candidate Scorecard.
Does 9/11 Justify Wall Street Donations?
The major story coming out of the debate was candidate Hillary Clinton's invoking of 9/11 to justify her Wall Street speaking fees and campaign contributions.
Sanders (from CBS transcript): "Now, why do they make millions of dollars of campaign contributions? They expect to get something. Everybody knows that. Once again, I am running a campaign differently than any other candidate. We are relying on small campaign donors, $750,000 and $30 apiece. That's who I'm indebted to."
Clinton: "Oh, wait a minute, senator. You know, not only do I have hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small, I am very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent. So I -- I represented New York. And I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked.
"Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy. And it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country."
Needless to say, this exchange got quite a reaction online, and one of the moderators brought this up.
Nancy Cordes: "...one of the tweets we saw -- said that I've never seen a candidate invoke 9/11 to justify millions of Wall Street donations until now the idea being that, yes, you are a champion of the community after 9/11. But what does that have to do with taking big donations?
Clinton: "Well, I'm sorry that whoever tweeted that -- had that impression because I worked closely with New Yorkers after 9/11 for my entire first term to rebuild. And so yes, I did know people. I had a lot of folks give me donations from all kinds of backgrounds, say, "I don't agree with you on everything. But I like what you do. I like how you stand up. I'm going to support you.... And I think that is absolutely perfect."
Sanders: "Well, I -- if I might -- I -- I -- I think the issue here is that I -- I applaud Secretary Clinton. She did. She's the senator from New York. She worked -- many of us supported you in trying to rebuild that devastation. But at the end of the day Wall Street today has enormous economic and political power. Their business model is greed and fraud. And for the sake of our economy they must -- the major banks must be broken up."
This has not been received well. The D.C. insider Daily 202 cites example after example of outlets criticizing Clinton's remarks, "Breathtaking cynicism." "The major gaffe of the night." "What was she thinking?" "Really cray-cray." "It was so odd, and so shameless..." "Could really come back to bite her." Daxid Axelrod said that it was "her one really false note. That was an example of her being too political." There has been widespread reaction since the debate, with many, many news outlets echoing that Clinton said this.
Clinton's use of 9/11 is being called a "gaffe" and it could turn out to be an even bigger problem because of the party's effort to minimize the audience for the debates. Invoking 9/11 might be her only "false note" in an otherwise good performance, but without the audience a debate usually would receive, people will only hear about this. They will not have any frame of reference for how she otherwise did. So the party's effort to "run out the clock" on Clinton's lead and keep people from hearing from Sanders might turn out to be too clever by half.
For details on the candidates' plans see Clinton vs Sanders vs O'Malley On Fixing Banking and Campaign for America's Future's Candidate Scorecard.
Other Notable Moments
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