Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton and rival Bernie Sanders challenged each other’s judgment and experience in a combative U.S. presidential debate ahead of Tuesday’s crucial nominating contest in New York.
Clinton and Sanders attacked each other over Wall Street, gun control and other issues on Thursday in a series of exchanges that laid bare the mounting pressures on them both but seemed unlikely to change the dynamics of the race, Reuters reports.
While far short of the brawls that have characterised Republican debates, the tone reflected a contentious turn in the Democratic contest.
Clinton and Sanders out-shouted each other while a split crowd roared its approval.
“If you’re both screaming at each other, the viewers won’t be able to hear either of you,” moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN warned during the debate at the historic Navy Yard in the New York borough of Brooklyn.
As the two-hour debate ended, social media analyst Brandwatch said Sanders had more than 173,000 mentions on Twitter, 55 per cent of them positive, while Clinton had more than 191,000 mentions, 54 percent of them negative.
Clinton mentions were more negative than positive in two out of the three previous debates.
Sanders, 74, will take a quick break from the campaign trail on Friday to fly to the Vatican, where he will give a brief speech at a conference on the world economy and social justice.
Sanders, who will be back in New York to campaign on Sunday, has said the trip is not a political appeal for the Catholic vote but a testament to his admiration for Pope Francis.
