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A Vigorous Foreign-Policy Debate Between Clinton and Sanders

A long-overdue debate has opened.

Katrina vanden Heuvel

December 22, 2015

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton debated at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, in December. (AP Photo / Jim Cole)

Saturday’s Democratic debate in New Hampshire provided stark contrast to the Republican “fear and loathing in Las Vegas” imbroglio last Tuesday. Republicans dished out bombast and bluster, while the three Democratic candidates offered policy and purpose, reminding Americans that we are strengthened when we abide by our values rather than trample them in panic.

Each week we cross-post an excerpt from Katrina vanden Heuvel’s column at the WashingtonPost.com. Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Sadly, far fewer voters watched the Democratic debate than the Republican invective. This failure was the perverse design of Democratic National Committee head Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (FL). As she must have known, scheduling a debate on the Saturday night before Christmas across from an NFL game would discourage viewers, not attract them. Democrats drew a little over 8 million viewers; Republicans an estimated 18 million. Wasserman Schultz has scheduled a limited number of debates at obscure times—a disservice to the country and to Democratic voters—in what appears to be an effort to protect the front-runner, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton.

Wasserman Schultz compounded this disgrace last week by going nuclear over a breach of Clinton voter data by some staffers for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), cutting the Sanders campaign off from access to its own lists. Sanders had to file suit to regain access. Wasserman Schultz would do the party and the country a great service if she resigned and formally joined the Clinton campaign. That may be the only course of action that would keep the young activists whom Sanders has inspired from concluding in disgust that the party apparatus was rigging the rules to favor Clinton.

Read the full text of Katrina’s column here.

Katrina vanden HeuvelTwitterKatrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation, America’s leading source of progressive politics and culture. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019.


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