Democratic debate live blog: Sanders and Clinton go head-to-head in New Hampshire

Not on the same page on capital punishment. (Photo by Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)

DURHAM — The debate highlighted a divide between Clinton and Sanders on the death penalty.

Asked if she still supports it, Clinton said: “Yes, I do.”

She added that states should be required to maintain the highest evidentiary standards and other safeguards, but she said capital punishment is appropriate for those like Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh.

Sanders said he understands those sentiments, but said he disagrees.

“In a world of so much of violence and killing, I just don’t believe that government should be part of the killing,” he said.

Clinton goes on the offensive:

A broken case of water lays along the street near a water station in Flint, Mich. (Ryan Garza/Detroit Free Press/AP)

DURHAM, N.H. — Hillary Clinton will break off campaigning in New Hampshire this weekend to travel to Flint, Mich., where a cost-saving decision led to poisonous levels of lead in the city’s water, her campaign said Thursday.

Clinton will visit the economically hard-hit city Sunday, sandwiching a trip in between campaign stops in New Hampshire ahead of Tuesday’s primary. Clinton trails rival Sen. Bernie Sanders here, and is unlikely to catch up.

She has made a national crusade of the Flint crisis, seizing on it as a matter of racial and economic inequality and government malfeasance. It is also a cause celebre for liberal activists that Clinton has harnessed faster than Sanders, and one that allows her to leverage her advantage with black voters whose support comes into play more heavily in the states that vote after heavily white Iowa and New Hampshire.

Read the full story here.

“Republicans talk a good game about veterans, but when it came to put money on the line they were not there. … We put together, not the bill that I wanted but probably the most comprehensive VA health care bill.”

–Bernie Sanders

THE FACT CHECKER | Sanders touts his record as chairman of Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, leading the charge to pass the comprehensive reform bill to address wait time problems at the Department of Veterans Affairs’ health system. But he has faced criticism from veterans groups for not paying attention to the issue as soon as the scandal erupted in April 2014.

In April 2014, whistle blowers revealed delays in accessing health care and manipulation of wait time data at the Phoenix VA Health Care System. The allegations rocked the VA and ultimately led to the resignation of then-VA secretary Eric Shinseki.

Some veterans groups still point to Sanders’s comments the month following the revelation of problems in Phoenix. During a May 15, 2014, hearing, Sanders said:

“The point I want to make is that when you are dealing with 200,000 people, if you did better than any other health institution in the world, there would be thousands of people every single day who would say ‘I don’t like what I’m getting.’ And we have to put that all of that in the context of the size of the VA.”

During an interview on CNN later that day, Sanders said: “Did the delays in care of these people on the secret waiting list actually cause these deaths? We don’t know.”

Then, Republicans on the Senate VA Committee wrote a letter urging Sanders to hold more oversight hearings to hold VA leaders accountable.  “At the beginning of the 113th Congress, the minority staff provided your office with a number of possible oversight hearing topics on ongoing issues at the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA),” the letter said. “To date, none of the hearings we requested have occurred.  In fact, during this Congress, the Committee has held only seven oversight hearings, which did not even begin to address the issues facing the Department.”

Sanders ultimately worked with his counterparts in the House and Republicans in the committee to work out a compromise VA overhaul bill.

SOCIAL STUDIES | We propose a new rule: The debate is over when the Snitch is captured.

ON THE ISSUES | Toward the end of Democrats’ January debate, Clinton turned suddenly toward the Flint water crisis. She had sent a top campaign aide to the hardscrabble town about 70 miles outside Detroit to see how residents were coping with being pumped poisonous water for nearly 18 months, and soon after the governor there took action, she said.

“I want to be a president who takes care of the big problems and the problems that are affecting the people of our country every day,” she said, seizing the political moment.

Sanders, meanwhile, went farther than any politician at his level has and called on Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder (R) to resign: “A man who acts that irresponsibly should not be in power.”

Since then, Flint has continued to dominate national headlines. Snyder has apologized twice and watched his approval ratings plummet, although a majority of residents don’t think he should step down. State and federal officials testified Wednesday in Congress in an emotional hearing. And Senate Democrats blocked consideration of an energy policy bill Thursday after Republicans declined to provide hundreds of millions of dollars of aid for Flint.

The issue has large racial overtones; Flint is mostly poor and mostly black. Clinton has high approval ratings among black voters; support among non-white voters is one of Sanders’s main weaknesses.

I’ll have more expansive thoughts on The Fix soon in my winners and losers post. But, I do think that there are no knockout blows so far but Clinton is winning on points.

Clinton laid the foundation for a series of future attacks during the debate’s first hour — Sanders as too narrowly focused, too pie in the sky and too inexperienced to be president.

In the second hour, where the conversation turned to foreign policy, Clinton’s ease with the subject matter (and Sanders’s unease) was apparent.

Clinton’s showing isn’t going to change the direction of the New Hampshire primary where Sanders will almost certainly win. But, she wasn’t trying to do that. She was trying to position herself well beyond New Hampshire, which she did.

Iowa questions “not the biggest deal in the world,” he says. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

DURHAM — Bernie Sanders said he agrees with a Des Moines Register editorial Thursday that cited irregularities in the reporting of results from the Iowa caucuses and referred to the Iowa Democratic Party’s handling of the situation as a “debacle.”

“I agree with The Des Moines Register, but let’s not blow this out of proportion,” Sanders said.

While his campaign is still scrutinizing Monday’s tight results, Sanders said it’s not a winner-take-all state and that he and Clinton will split the national delegates roughly evenly. Under the results as they stand, Clinton has 22 delegates and Sanders has 20.

“This is not the biggest deal in the world,” Sanders said.  “At the end of the day, no matter how it’s recounted it will break roughly even.”

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks in Derry, N.H. on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016. (AP/John Minchillo)

ON THE ISSUES | Drip, drip drip. Throughout this campaign, there’s been a steady stream of news about Clinton’s exclusive use of a private email server while secretary of state.

An FBI investigation into the emails (not Clinton specifically) is ongoing.

Clinton has maintained she did nothing wrong and did not handle classified material on her server. But in the State Department’s most recent court-ordered release of her emails, officials said seven email chains contained “top secret” information and wouldn’t be released.

It’s yet another issue that’s put Clinton on the defensive.

She’s gone from saying no classified emails passed her server to saying that no emails that were marked classified were sent or received on her private sever. The Washington Post Fact Checker team reported Clinton actually has the power to decide what State Department material is classified, though that doesn’t extend to material from other agencies like the CIA.

After saying in an October debate that “the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails,” Sanders has changed his tone, saying the potential that classified information was on her sever is a serious issue, but added he’ll let the American people decide what was right or wrong.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via Google Trends:

Hillary Clinton’s message in this foreign policy section of the debate is simple: Bernie Sanders is too inexperienced on the world stage to take a chance on.

Her idea that “you never know what will come through the door” is a re-statement of the case she made against Barack Obama with her “3 am” ad in  the 2008 campaign. The argument goes like this: The world is dangerous and unpredictable. We can’t have someone learning on the job.

It didn’t work against Obama because he effectively rebutted it by pointing to his judgment versus her experience. Sanders is trying the same approach in hopes he can follow Obama’s blueprint of success.

“I went to Wall Street before the crash. I was the one saying you’re going to wreck the economy because of these shenanigans with mortgages. I called to end the carried interest loophole that hedge fund managers enjoy. I proposed changes in CEO compensation.”

–Hillary Clinton

Clinton tends to overstate the significance of her visit to Wall Street some month before the crash. ProPublica obtained a video of the 28-minute speech and said she “steered a middle ground” to the business executives gathered at the Nasdaq stock exchange on Dec. 5, 2007.

As ProPublica put it:

Clinton gave a shout-out to her “wonderful donors” in the audience, and asked the bankers to voluntarily suspend foreclosures and freeze interest rates on adjustable subprime mortgages. She praised Wall Street for its role in creating the nation’s wealth, then added that “too many American families are not sharing” in that prosperity.

She said the brewing economic troubles weren’t mainly the fault of banks, “not by a long shot,” but added they needed to shoulder responsibility for their role. While there was plenty of blame to go around for the spate of reckless lending, and while Wall Street may not have created the foreclosure crisis, it “certainly had a hand in making it worse” and “needs to help us solve it.”

Clinton said she would consider legislation if the voluntary proposals were not adopted. But when her ideas were not accepted, neither were her five proposed bills. All but one had no co-sponsors – and no Senate committee took action on them. She played little role in a major housing bill that became law in 2008. And her bill to curb corporate compensation also went nowhere.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Chris Cillizza translates some key phrases of the debate, for those viewers not fluent in passive-aggressive political speak.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via Twitter:

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) speaks as he debates with Democratic candidate former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)

THE CONTENDERS | The Bernie Sanders camp has to be happy that the first hour of this one on one debate with Hillary Clinton was fought entirely on domestic issues — particularly economic inequality and what can and should be done about Wall Street.

That’s Sanders’s turf in this race — it’s where he feels most comfortable and where the Democratic base quite clearly favors his populist approach to Clinton’s more pragmatic style.

Plus, remember that the first hour of this debate was 9 pm to 10 pm on the east coast when, presumably, the viewership for the event is much higher.

Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the University of New Hampshire on February 4, 2016. (Justin Sullivan/Getty)

“I will look into it [releasing a transcript].”

–Hillary Clinton

THE FACT CHECKER | Clinton has certainly been looking into it a long time. The Washington Post has repeatedly asked the campaign to release copies of Clinton’s paid speeches–most directly and pointedly for the last two weeks.

The Post specifically made the request on Jan. 23 and then again on Jan. 24. The request was renewed on Feb. 4, the morning of the MSNBC debate.

Other news organizations have asked for copies as well. The silence have been deafening.

ON THE ISSUES | This is Clinton’s strong suit, and it’s a topic she has dominated in the past four debates.

Clinton is the most trusted 2016 candidate on terrorism, according to a November Washington Post poll.

She often pivots to a general election focus when talking about what she’d do, attempting to balance how to come across as hawkish as possible with a base that is increasingly worried about terrorism — but also wary of military intervention in the Middle East.

There’s some tension with her former boss, who Americans give low marks on terrorism. When Democrats gathered for their November debate, a day removed from the Paris attacks, Clinton not-so-subtly rebuked President Obama’s comments that the Islamic State had been “contained.”

Sanders has struggled to match Clinton’s intensity on national security and terrorism, preferring to talk about his bread-and-butter issue of economic inequality. He tried to get a leg up in December’s ABC debate by questioning Clinton’s decision to support regime change in the Middle East while she was secretary of state.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Via Twitter:

DURHAM — After the candidates sparred over the influence of money in politics, the Sanders campaign sent reporters an email with a provocative headline: “Elizabeth Warren on How Wall Street has influenced Hillary Clinton.”

The email recounted how the Massachusetts senator, who’s beloved by the party’s left wing, described Clinton’s 2001 vote for the Bankruptcy Reform Act.

In Warren’s book, The Two Income Trap, she wrote the following:

Senator Clinton received $140,000 in campaign contributions from banking industry executives in a single year, making her one of the top two recipients in the Senate. Big banks were now part of Senator Clinton’s constituency. She wanted their support, and they wanted hers—including a vote in favor of ‘that awful bill.'”

Moderator Chuck Todd gave Hillary Clinton a chance to put the speaking fees issue behind her by asking whether she would release the transcripts, which do exist, of her paid speeches.

Clinton passed. “I will look into it,” she said, meaning, of course, that there is a zero percent chance she will be doing it.

The calculation here by Clinton and her campaign is clear: There is more potential damage to be done by releasing all of the transcripts of her speeches then there is in refusing to do so.

They are probably right. But, refusing to release the transcripts means that the issue will continue linger — and maybe even flare — during the primary fight.

SOCIAL STUDIES | And now for some incisive mid-debate analysis from our youngest political commentators, via our book critic Carlos Lozada:

Spoiler: It’s going great.

(Ouch)

Forget about winning over #Millennials; it’s clear that these two are the ones the candidates should be working to impress.

(Also, some kids came to our offices and watched and weighed in on the candidates before Monday’s Iowa caucuses. Check out this video.)

SOCIAL STUDIES | Silverman, a Bernie Sanders supporter, tweeted this ahead of the debate:

We’re posting the transcript here as it comes in. Annotate or follow along as Washington Post reporters and readers using Genius add insight throughout the night and into tomorrow.

“The idea that I would dismantle health care in America while we’re waiting to pass Medicare for all is just not accurate. … I helped write that bill [the Affordable Care Act].”

–Bernie Sanders

THE FACT CHECKER | Sanders exaggerates when he says he helped write the Affordable Care Act. He wrote only one amendment – after he had to withdraw a proposal to create a Medicare-for-all-type single-payer system.

The American Health Security Act of 2009, introduced by Sanders during the health care bill debate, proposed a national health insurance system that would be administered by states and following guidelines set on a federal level.

Sanders’s new health-care system would have eliminated existing federal health insurance, including Medicare and Medicaid, and would repeal state exchanges as set up through ACA. It would create a whole new health insurance system with new quality-control methods, a new standards board, and more. That’s why critics say he had proposed to “dismantle” the ACA.

Sanders withdrew that bill after Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) initiated a procedural move requiring the Senate clerk to read all 767 pages of the amendment — which would have taken eight to 10 hours — and, thereby, halt the Senate health-care debate.

Then, Sanders turned his attention to inserting a community health center provision into ACA, as an alternative to his 2009 proposal. This provision vastly increased health-care access for low-income and underserved communities, increasing the number of patients who receive primary and dental care, mental health counseling and low-cost prescription drugs. It also funded new centers and improvements to existing centers.

Sanders’s push for the community health centers helped convince some Democratic lawmakers who believed the bill didn’t go far enough to help rural states, where such centers are vital health providers. In the end, Sanders voted in support of the ACA.

ON THE ISSUES | Perhaps Sanders’s most hard-hitting argument for why Clinton is not a true progressive is this:

The implication is that Clinton has ties with Wall Street going back to her days as New York senator and is thus not fit to lead the “political revolution” that Sanders must come to fix the nation’s income inequality.

This campaign, Clinton has amped up her populist rhetoric to try to avoid those criticisms. She’s called for more rules and enforcement on Wall Street to avoid another financial crisis, among other proposals. And she’s argued she’s taken more money from teachers than bankers.

But The Washington Post’s campaign finance team reports that $1 of every $10 dollars contributed to back Clinton’s presidential bid has come from financial institutions like big banks.

Her collection of multi-hundred-thousand-dollar speaking fees from some of these institutions is another potential sore spot. “That’s what they offered,” Clinton said at Wednesday’s town hall in response to CNN’s Anderson Cooper’s question about her decision to accept $675,000 in speaking fees from Goldman Sachs over a period of a few years.

Senator Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and 2016 Democratic presidential candidate, waves as he arrives to the Democratic presidential candidate debate at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, New Hampshire, U.S., on Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016. Hillary Clinton and Sanders each tried to establish their credentials as progressives as they vied for the votes of Democrats and independents in next week’s New Hampshire primary. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Bernie Sanders

“[Americans are] worried about the future of their kids, and yet almost all new income and wealth is going to the top 1 percent.”

–Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)

THE FACT CHECKER | Sanders is relying on an outdated statistic. The numbers changed over the summer, as Sanders has sometimes acknowledged. But in this debate, he seems to have lapsed into an old talking point.

Sanders is relying on the research of University of California-Berkeley professor Emmanuel Saez,  who had once concluded that the top one percent accumulated 91 percent of all income gains from 2009-12. But then when the numbers were updated in June, the new numbers showed that the top one percent captured 58 percent of total real income growth. “The recovery from the Great Recession now looks less lopsided than in previous years,” Saez said.

Moreover, there are limitations in Saez’s data, which tallies wages, taxable interest and dividends, rental income, and so forth. Social Security and unemployment benefits are not counted. Neither are government transfer payments, such as food stamps or veterans benefits. The data also does not include noncash items, such as employer-provided health insurance. Lastly, the impact of income and payroll taxes are not part of the calculations, even though the rich pay most of the taxes — and some lower-income workers actually receive payments such as the Earned Income Tax Credit that offset all of their federal payroll and income taxes.

In other words, the statistics show part of the income picture— essentially the wages. They do not necessarily show everything that Americans receive to help them pay for the things they consume, be it food stamps (for the poor) or company-provided health insurance.

If you had any doubt about whether Hillary Clinton is concerned about the momentum of Bernie Sanders, look at the first 30 minutes of this debate.

Clinton has attacked Sanders on guns, on heath care and on his “artful smear” of her over campaign contributions.

Sanders has played defense the entire night thus far.

The more aggressive candidate is usually the one who feels the need to move the needle in a debate. That’s Clinton tonight. Big time.

Democratic presidential candidate former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) shake hands at the start of their MSNBC Democratic debate. ( Joe Raedle/Getty)

ON THE ISSUES | Hillary Clinton supported free trade when she was secretary of state. She’s a fan of nation-building and regime change, as the United States and its allies attempted in Libya. She wavered on the Keystone XL pipeline before coming out against it.

Those are Sanders’s core arguments for why, in his words, Clinton is a progressive except when she’s a moderate. His campaign sent out a series of tweets Wednesday with this theme:

Clinton has called that a “low blow,” pointing to her support for equal pay for women, same-sex marriage and comprehensive immigration reform. Not to mention she’s arguably to the left of Sanders on gun control.

And Clinton has argued that Sanders’s leftward policies, like universal health care and free public college, are unattainable in today’s divided government.

But the charges seemed to hit home when Sanders repeated them at a Wednesday town hall in New Hampshire hosted by CNN, putting Clinton on the defensive.

Hillary Clinton just showed why she is a formidable debater.  Asked by Rachel Maddow to respond to Sanders’s charge that she is not a progressive, Clinton quickly moved the focus to Sanders’s record on gun control — including a series of votes against the Brady Bill.

She did it effortlessly, and scored points — and applause.

One other thing worth noting: By bringing up gun control in a New Hampshire debate, Clinton is tacitly acknowledging that she isn’t really playing to win in the vote next Tuesday. New Hampshire is a state that values the 2nd amendment.

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks during a campaign stop at the Rochester Opera House, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2016, in Rochester, N.H. (AP/John Minchillo)

Amid growing reports of irregularities in the Iowa Democratic caucuses, Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign said late Thursday that the state party had rebuffed its initial requests for paper records tallying the votes in each precinct that were used to determine Hillary Clinton’s narrow victory.

Sanders’s supporters have complained in recent days that some caucuses, which were administered by the Iowa Democratic Party, were disorganized. In at least one case, Sanders’s backers say, results were not reported accurately to the state party.

“We want to figure this out in the most diplomatic way possible,” said Rania Batrice, Sanders’s Iowa communications director.

The campaign has not retained a lawyer for this matter, officials said. They declined to discuss what options they may have to protest the results.

“We’re not contemplating a lawsuit,” campaign spokesman Mike Briggs said. “We are assessing the situation.”

The caucus problems were first reported by the Des Moines Register. The newspaper published a scathing editorial Thursday under the headline, “Something Smells in the Democratic Party.” The editorial called Monday’s caucuses a “debacle,” assailing party leaders for declining to review the results in which two-tenths of 1 percent separated Sanders from Clinton.

Read the full story.

Bernie Sanders kept to the usual shtick: campaign finance reform, millionaires and billionaires and so on and so forth.

Clinton made an argument I hadn’t heard before: Yes, those things Sanders talks about are important but other things like racial equality and equal rights for gay Americans are too.  The case here is apparent: I am Bernie Sanders + lots of other stuff too.

This is Clinton with an eye well beyond New Hampshire and into the southern states of March when black and Latino voters make up a much bigger chunk of the vote.

SOCIAL STUDIES | Hillary Clinton went all the way back to 1979 for Throwback Thursday on Instagram. In a series of photos, Clinton defended her claim that she’s a genuine progressive. Check out the posts below:

BY THE NUMBERS | On Thursday, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced that it had raised $15 million in January. That’s a pretty remarkable statement outside of the context in which we understand it. Say that to someone a year ago, and it sounds incredible. Say it to someone a few days after the two tie in Iowa, it sounds about right.

Clinton had a huge fundraising lead when the two candidates started their campaigns. For the quarter ending June 30, 2015, she outraised Sanders by a wide margin. In each of the two subsequent quarters, she also outraised him — but by much less.

There’s a correlation between how much each raised and the state of the race. Clinton was way ahead of Sanders on June 30 of last year. She’s still ahead, but by a much smaller amount.

Read full story.

Senator Bernie Sanders at a Democratic presidential town hall hosted by CNN. (Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg)

ON THE ISSUES | ROCHESTER, N.H. — Just hours before they were set to appear on a debate stage together, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) took a jab at Hillary Clinton for her 2002 vote in support of the Iraq war while a senator representing New York.

“Sometimes it’s easy to apologize for a bad vote 15 or 20 years later when the tide has changed,” Sanders said at a rally here. “It is a lot harder to stand up … and cast the right vote. That’s what leadership is about, not having to apologize for standing up and fighting for what’s right.”

Sanders, a member of the U.S. House at the time, was a vocal opponent of the use of force in Iraq. Clinton, a former secretary of state, has since called her vote a mistake.

Sanders has pointed out their divergent paths on Iraq on many other occasions, but his shot on Thursday afternoon underscored the more contentious nature of the Democratic contest now that voters are starting to weigh in.

Read the full story.