Democrats clash in presidential debate
Los Angeles: Democratic White House candidates have attacked President Donald Trump but also clashed sharply with one another during Democratic debate, where a smaller field allowed lesser-known candidates to shine against the frontrunners.
One day after Trump's ignominious impeachment, seven candidates united to declare the president must be defeated at the 2020 ballot box.
"We need to restore the integrity of the presidency," said frontrunner Joe Biden on Thursday, who accused Trump of "dumbing down" the office "beyond what I even thought he would do." Senator Bernie Sanders, second in the standings, blasted Trump as "running the most corrupt administration in the modern history of this country," while fellow Senator Elizabeth Warren said the president ignores the poor to do "everything he can for the wealthy and the well-connected." But after calls for greater moral leadership from the White House and crisp back-and-forth about trade policy, health care and how to lift more Americans out of poverty, the debate took a more aggressive tone with a series of heated clashes between candidates. Warren launched her sharpest attacks yet on rival Pete Buttigieg, saying the 37-year-old mayor of South Bend, Indiana, has been holding closed-door fundraisers for the wealthy, including at a billionaire-owned "wine cave" in California. "Your net worth is 100 times mine," Buttigieg, whose star has risen substantially in the past two months of campaigning, said.
"I don't sell access to my time," Warren shot back.
While Warren hit Buttigieg on money in politics, Senator Amy Klobuchar also sought to kneecap the mayor.
"I did not come here to listen to this argument. I came here to make a case for progress -- and I have never even been to a wine cave," she quipped.
Klobuchar was quick to remind viewers of her Midwestern roots as she called for "returning to sanity" in 2020. She also appeared to challenge the accomplishments of Buttigieg, a fellow Midwesterner, labeling him a "local official."
When Buttigieg suggested there were "bigger fish to fry," Klobuchar clapped back with a cutting retort: "I don't think we have bigger fish to fry than picking a president of the United States." The final prime-time debate of 2019 featured just seven of the 15 Democrats still in the contest six weeks before the first nomination ballots are cast in Iowa in February. The showdown marks a significant drop from the 10 candidates in November's debate, and the dozen who crowded the stage in October.
Cozier quarters allowed for more extended exchanges about policy between participants hoping for their party's nomination to challenge Trump. agencies
