Hilary Clinton & Bernie Sanders will be rumbling in New York City next week as the two finally agree to a debate in NYC before the upcoming Democratic primary that will go towards naming the Democratic candidate who will seek the 45th presidency of the United States of American in the 2016 Presidential Elections.
On April 14—five days before April 19th’s New York primary—Clinton & Sanders will take part in a debate hosted by CNN & Time Warner Cable in Brooklyn, New York.
For a while now, the Sanders campaign has been publicly challenging Clinton to agree to another debate between the two. Specifically, Sanders’ camp has been requesting a debate within the state of New York against Clinton ahead of the state’s primary. However, the Clinton campaign hasn’t accepted to another debate and for a while seemed as though they wouldn’t due to an alleged change of “tone” in Sanders campaign.
Becoming somewhat competitive since the first votes were cast in Iowa, the Sanders campaign has been relentless in discrediting Clinton. And this harder campaigning by Sanders’ camp showed when late last week Clinton lashed out about the Sanders campaign while at a rally for her campaign in New York.
While greeting the crowd at her rally, Clinton was confronted by a Greenpeace activist in-regards to having alleged financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. Rather than address the activist, Clinton replied angrily: “I am so sick of the Sanders campaign lying about me. I’m sick of it.”
While Clinton immediately tossed the “attack” as being orchestrated by the Sanders’ campaign, the incident was apparently planned by Greenpeace acting on its own since they have chosen not to endorse ANY of the presidential candidates.
According to Greenpeace Democracy Campaign Director Molly Dorozenski, “Secretary Clinton is conflating Greenpeace with the Sanders campaign, but we are an independent organization, and our research team has assessed the contributions to all Presidential candidates. We have not and will not endorse candidates. Earlier this year, we asked both Secretary Clinton and Senator Sanders to sign our pledge to #fixdemocracy, and while Sanders signed, Clinton did not. We intend to continue to challenge all candidates to listen to the people, not their biggest donors.”
Thursday’s incident, which was caught on film, comes after Clinton’s chief strategist Joel Benenson commented on how Sanders needs to “tone down” and that his campaign should ease up on “very negative” rhetoric that’s appearing in the presidential nomination race between the two.
Despite it looking as though a debate wouldn’t be happening anytime soon, it was announced early this week that two presidential hopefuls will face one another in Brooklyn.
“It’s great for the people of New York that there will be a debate in Brooklyn, something that the Clinton campaign has long opposed,” commented Michael Briggs, Sanders’ spokesman, in a statement about the debate.
And the Clinton campaign was not all too quiet in their response.
“We had thought the Sanders campaign would have accepted our offer for a Brooklyn debate on April 14 in a New York minute, but it ended up taking a few extra days for them to agree. We are glad they did,” fired back, Clinton spokesperson, Brian Fallon.
According to a recent poll tracker by CBS, Clinton has 53% of the New York vote while 43% support Sanders. While Sanders believes he will New York, and has been backed by a few political analysts, Clinton could pose a great challenge and may just snag the win since she has a longer history within the state. Prior to becoming a presidential candidate for the second time, Clinton represented the State of New York as Senator within the senate from 2001 to 2009.
If, and only if it happens, losing New York to Sanders could be a major blow to Clinton’s campaign effort.
