As the Democratic presidential candidates scrambled to prepare for a debate here Saturday that will now focus heavily on the attacks in Paris and the broader issue of national security, the event promises to highlight the clearest contrasts yet among the candidates.
On issues such as economic policy, criminal justice and civil rights, the candidates are not always easily distinguishable. But when it comes to national defense, the front-runner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, stands out as a hawk among Democrats, while Sen. Bernie Sanders, her insurgent rival from Vermont, is a longstanding and staunch opponent of international intervention.
Leading up to the Paris attacks Friday night, Clinton’s foreign policy record had been a point of vulnerability on the campaign trail. Her rivals have consistently pointed out that she voted in 2003 to authorize military force in Iraq, which Clinton herself said she had come to regret. It’s a point they raised repeatedly in highlighting their concerns with her call recently for a no-fly zone over Syria.
But in the aftermath of the bloodshed in Europe, the former secretary of State will likely argue she is the only candidate on the stage with a viable plan to confront the Islamic State extremists — and with the experience to execute it. Her rivals will highlight the failures of such intervention in the past.
Clinton has pushed for a more aggressive response in Syria, including more arms for Syrian rebels deemed moderate. She has said U.S. goals must include both defeating the Islamic State militarily and removing Syrian President Bashar Assad through a political process.
“You can’t really do one without the other,” she told MSNBC in late September
Sanders will be pushed to explain how the hands-off approach he advocates would keep Americans and their allies safe. At a candidates forum in South Carolina last week, he said the American military should not get entangled in the battle against the Islamic State, sometimes called ISIS or ISIL.
“In terms of how you deal with ISIS, I know that Saudi Arabia and all these countries, they want American ground troops to be in combat right now,” Sanders said. “I disagree. I think what this war against the barbaric ISIS organization is about is for the soul of Islam. And I think you've got a lot of Muslim countries there who are going to have to roll up their sleeves and get their troops on the ground and start taking on ISIS in a way they have not yet done.”
Sanders said the United States and its European allies should be supportive of such an effort, but he cautioned that “whenever there is a military issue, the world is saying, ‘Hey, no problem, American troops, American taxpayers, they'll do it, we don't have to do anything.’ Wrong. The whole world is going to have to get involved in coalition to take on ISIS, not just the United States.”
There are but a handful of American-trained rebels on the ground in Syria. As secretary of State, Clinton had pushed for more American involvement in training a fighting force, but her approach was rejected by the Obama administration. “What the Pentagon has been doing hasn’t worked,” she said in her MSNBC interview.
Clinton has emphasized her own views on Syria, particularly where they differ from Obama administration policy, as Republicans have tried to cast her as part of what they see as the president's failure to act more decisively in Syria. That could be a key line of attack for the GOP in the general election if Clinton is the Democratic nominee.
During last month’s Democratic debate in Las Vegas, Clinton’s campaign summarized her current position as seeking “a diplomatic solution that ends the conflict, ends Assad’s rule, and brings all of Syria’s communities together to fight ISIS.”
To accomplish that, she advocates working with allies to create “safe zones” in the region, protected by a no-fly zone in the air.
But as Clinton faces scrutiny from liberals in the Democratic primary, she has tried at times to temper the notion that she would be quicker to use military force than Obama. During the forum in South Carolina, she denied that she would be a more aggressive commander in chief, while at the same time highlighting the high-level experience that separates her from others in both parties seeking the presidency.
“I spent a lot of time with President Obama in the Situation Room, struggling over a lot of really difficult decisions,” she said.
Former Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley, the third candidate on the stage Saturday night, has tried to draw a contrast with Clinton by opposing a no-fly zone while arguing that the U.S. should stay engaged in a more limited way.
“Secretary Clinton is always quick for the military intervention. I believe that a no-fly zone right now is not advisable,” he told CNN last month. "No-fly zones sound attractive, but no-fly zones also have to be enforced.”
He worries that establishing no-fly zones could lead to potential clashes with Russian air forces in the region and spark “an escalation of Cold War proportions because of an accident.”
“I don't believe that every fight is our fight,” he added.
But in Saturday’s match-up, the pressure will be on Sanders. The Vermont senator, who caught fire over the summer with his own brand of straight talk and unapologetic affection for Scandinavian socialism, has hit a rut. “Bern-mentum,” as his supporters call his insurgent rise, is stalling. And Sanders seems conflicted about how to rekindle it.
Now it’s on him to demonstrate that there is a second act, that he wasn’t merely a summer fling for Democrats. Clinton opened a 20-point lead over him more than a month ago, according to national polling averages, and Sanders hasn’t been able to narrow it since.
As Sanders seeks to reignite his movement, he faces the dilemma of how aggressively to attack Clinton, the front-runner. Sanders has long disparaged negative campaigning, and boasts that never in his career has he run a negative advertisement. He calls such ads “stupid.” His advisors, though, are pushing him to call out Clinton as a waffler and beholden to corporate interests.
How far Sanders is willing to go will probably come into clearer focus Saturday, when he has an opportunity to directly confront his rival before an audience of millions. The debate stage will be less crowded than it was during their first debate, down from five candidates to three, giving him ample opportunity for one-on-one exchanges with Clinton.
The torturous process of motivating Sanders to steer his fight not just at Wall Street and Republicans but at the Democrat who presents an immediate existential threat to his candidacy has been playing out in public for several weeks. Remarks by strategists, nudging by surrogates and news releases sent from the campaign all suggest the gloves are coming off, only to be followed by public appearances where Sanders himself barely swings.
When a Sanders campaign operative mocked Clinton, suggesting that his boss might consider her for vice president, Sanders apologized. He complained during a forum of presidential candidates in South Carolina about reporters constantly trying to spark feuds between him and Clinton. But sometimes he obliges, having taken her to task for her hesitance on opposing the Keystone pipeline, a Pacific trade pact and breaking up the big banks.
Sanders’ ambivalence is unsurprising. His appeal has been that he isn’t like other candidates. Refocusing his efforts toward cutting down his opponent could undermine the Bernie brand he has so successfully cultivated. Some veteran strategists have warned that taking the campaign in such a direction would only hurt it. Among them is Joe Trippi, who was a mastermind behind the rise to national prominence of Howard Dean, another progressive Vermonter who shocked the party establishment with his early momentum in the 2004 presidential election.
Much of the hand-wringing in the Sanders campaign is now centered on how much focus he should put on Clinton’s email troubles. In the first Democratic debate, in Las Vegas, Sanders seemed to give Clinton a pass when he agreed with her that the American people don’t want to hear about the topic. “Let me say something that may not be great politics,” he said. “But I think the secretary is right. And that is that the American people are sick and tired of hearing about your damn emails!”
The line drew thunderous applause. But it also took off the table for Sanders one of Clinton’s perceived biggest vulnerabilities as a candidate. Sanders has since clarified, saying the government investigation of her use of a private email server while secretary of State is a serious matter and must run its course. On Saturday, he could try to find a way back into the issue.
The debate is taking place at a crucial battleground for the liberal underdog. His campaign strategy is rooted in a strong showing here and in New Hampshire, which supporters hope would give Sanders momentum to win other states. He has been drawing huge crowds, and for a time he was rapidly gaining on Clinton.
But the gains slowed as Clinton’s fortunes changed on the national stage. Her strong showing in the Las Vegas debate was followed by her refusal to be broken during 11 hours of grilling before the House Benghazi Committee. Her resilience was well-received by Democrats. Voter doubts about her durability as a candidacy subsided after the Capitol Hill confrontation, particularly in Iowa.
“People think she has stabilized here,” said Dennis Goldford, a professor of political science at Drake University, which is hosting the debate. Goldford said that although Sanders continues to draw crowds and has established an energetic base of supporters, it is unclear whether his plan to follow the Obama 2008 model by turning out massive numbers of voters who would not normally caucus will come to fruition.
“He has a certain charisma,” Goldford said, “but he doesn’t have what Obama had.”
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