Philadelphia Becomes Battleground for Democratic Candidates

Once the most civil of rivals, Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton are finally allowing the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to become a little heated. And the gloves officially came off in Philadelphia.

Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have been civil opponents so far. But respective campaign stops in Philadelphia saw their rivalry grow a little more heated. (REUTERS)

Sanders stumped in the City of Brotherly Love just one day after Clinton gave a speech at the AFL-CIO convention. He is clearly trying to ride a wave of momentum, having won six of the last seven state contests. Still, Clinton maintains a wide lead, and has her own priority – namely, putting Sanders down and strengthening her own campaign for the big office.

For Sanders to win the nomination, he would have to take 68 percent of all delegates remaining, which translates to huge victories in both big and small states. That includes New York, which Clinton is nearly guaranteed to win, having represented the Empire State in the Senate for 8 years. Sanders had previously made a big deal of pledging that he didn’t want to run a dirty campaign – one that spoke badly of Clinton – but he appears to be veering off that path as the days go on and stresses mount for both presidential hopefuls.

Attending the same AFL-CIO conference as Clinton, a day later, Sanders pointed out that he would not be leaving the campaign stop to go fundraising with Wall Street bankers, like Clinton did. “I will not be hustling money from the wealthy and the powerful,” he pointed out, which was clearly a shot at Clinton, who did exactly that.

Clinton meanwhile focused on Sanders’ truthfulness and lack of as much political experience as she has – although she did stop short, said NBC, of calling him unqualified. Clinton then tried to bring the race back on track, pointing out that she’d take Bernie Sanders as president “any day” over Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, and tried to focus on the negatives about her Republican opponents.

We’ll see how much impact the candidates’ tough-talk had on voters’ minds when Pennsylvania heads to the primary polls on April 26th.