AJC in New Hampshire: A sharp debate over what it means to be a Democrat

Durham, N.H. - After the slimmest of victories in Iowa, Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton cast Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders as an idealist who can never live up to his campaign vows and tried to undercut his argument that she's the embodiment of a powerful Wall Street establishment.

The former secretary of state assailed Sanders’ platform throughout a two-hour debate on Thursday, depicting his pitch for free higher education as fatally flawed, his “Medicare for All” plan to expand healthcare as a threat to President Barack Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement and his infrastructure plan as doomed to fail in a divided Congress.

“I’m not going to make promises I cannot keep,” Clinton said, adding: “I’m not going to tell people that I will raise your incomes and not your taxes – and not mean it. Because I don’t want to see the kind of struggle the middle class is going through exemplified by these promises that will raise taxes.”

Sanders, firing back, depicted himself as the conscience of a more liberal, progressive and frustrated Democratic Party long overshadowed by leaders like Clinton who he said were too willing to compromise and too timid to fight for more ambitious gains.

“All of the ideas that I am talking about, they are not radical ideas,” said Sanders, invoking his proposal for a federal building spree that would to create 13 million new jobs and funded by closing tax loopholes on Wall Street companies.

“The middle class bailed out Wall Street in their time of need,” Sanders added. “Now it’s Wall Street’s turn to bail out the middle class.”