Clinton, Sanders fight to own ‘progressive’

HILLARY Clinton and Bernie Sanders got into a back-and-forth on Twitter on Wednesday after the Vermont senator questioned Clinton’s progressivism and called her “dependent, through her super-PAC and in other ways, on Wall Street and drug company money.”

The dustup comes in the middle of an eventful week for the two contenders for the Democratic nomination. After Clinton won the Iowa caucuses on Monday by only a slight margin (a result the Sanders campaign is reviewing for discrepancies), the candidates are set to face off in a town hall on Wednesday and a debate yesterday, both in New Hampshire, ahead of that state’s primary on Tuesday, February 9.

At a campaign event in Keene on Tuesday, MSNBC’s Kasie Hunt asked Sanders, “Hillary Clinton has called herself a progressive with a plan. Do you think Hillary Clinton is a progressive?”

“Some days, yes,” he responded. “Except when she announces she is a proud moderate. And then, I guess, she is not a progressive. I think, frankly, it is very hard to be a real progressive and to take on the establishment in a way that I think has to be taken …”

Members of Clinton’s campaign quickly responded on Twitter, with her communications director comparing the statement to then Senator Barack Obama’s “likeable enough” line during the 2008 Democratic primary race, which was widely criticized as patronising.