Near the end of a Michigan debate that featured sharp clashes over trade and the auto industry bailout, as well as a lengthy discussion of religion, Clinton and Sanders both said they could not wait to face the brash billionaire in the Nov. 8 election to succeed Democratic President Barack Obama.

“I think Donald Trump’s bigotry, his bullying, his bluster, are not going to wear well on the American people,” Clinton said. “We have to end the divisiveness, we have to unify the country.”

Sanders said he would “love” to run against Trump and noted many opinion polls showed him faring better against him than Clinton did. He and Clinton urged voters to compare the substance of their debate with the Republican versions, which last week featured name-calling and Trump defending his penis size.

“We are, if elected president, going to invest a lot of money in mental health,” Sanders said, then cracked a joke. “And when you watch these Republican debates, you know why we need to invest in mental health.”

Trump frequently says he will beat either Clinton or Sanders. “I am the one person that she does not want to run against,” he said of Clinton on Saturday.

The debate in Flint, which is suffering a water contamination and public health crisis, came as Sanders has struggled to slow Clinton’s march to the presidential nomination. Sanders picked up some good news on Sunday with a projected win in Maine’s caucus.

Clinton, 68, a former secretary of state and first lady, has spoken on the campaign trail of the need for more love and kindness, a contrast to Trump’s rhetoric about his plans to deport illegal immigrants and temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country.

“I don’t intend to get into the gutter with whoever they nominate, but instead to lift our sights,” Clinton said in the debate.

Describing herself as a “praying person,” she said it was hard to imagine living under the pressure of the White House “without being able to fall back on prayer and on my faith.”

Sanders, asked if he was deliberately keeping his Jewish faith in the background on the campaign trail, said his father’s family was wiped out in the Holocaust. He described going shopping with his mother as a boy in Brooklyn, New York, and seeing people with numbers on their arms from Nazi concentration camps.

“I am very proud of being Jewish, and that is an essential part of who I am as a human being,” Sanders said.

‘DISASTROUS’ TRADE POLICIES

Earlier, the two candidates exchanged angry jabs over trade, with Sanders accusing Clinton of backing “disastrous” trade policies that moved manufacturing jobs out of cities like Flint and Detroit and shifted them overseas.

But Clinton said Sanders’ opposition to the 2009 auto bailout, a crucial issue in a state that is home to the U.S. auto industry, would have cost millions of jobs. The bailout, which Clinton supported, passed Congress and has been credited with helping save the U.S. industry.

Sanders, 74 a U.S. senator from Vermont and democratic socialist, also questioned the sincerity of Clinton’s conversion to opposing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed 12-nation Pacific Rim trade deal.

The two contenders cut each other off on several occasions, a rare occurrence in a race that has been much more polite than the raucous Republican presidential campaign.

“Excuse me, I’m talking,” Sanders said to Clinton when she tried to interrupt. “If you’re going to talk, tell the whole story,” Clinton responded.

Sanders pressed his charge that Clinton was too close to Wall Street and demanded again that she release the transcript of paid speeches she has given to Wall Street firms. Clinton said she would release them when all the candidates, including Republicans, also release transcripts of similar talks.

‘THERE AIN’T NOTHING!’

Throwing up his hands, Sanders said: “I’ll release it. Here it is. There ain’t nothing! I don’t give speeches to Wall Street!”

The debate was held in Flint to highlight the city’s water contamination crisis, and both candidates expressed outrage at Flint’s plight and demanded Republican Governor Rick Snyder’s resignation.

The crisis in Flint, a predominantly black city of 100,000, was triggered when an emergency city manager installed by Snyder switched the city’s water supply to the nearby Flint River from Lake Michigan to save money.

The change corroded Flint’s aging pipes and released lead and other toxins into the water supply, exposing thousands of residents including children to high lead levels that have sparked serious health problems.

(Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Luciana Lopez and Jonathan Allen; Editing by Caren Bohan and Peter Cooney)

The post Clinton, Sanders both say they can beat Trump during feisty Michigan debate appeared first on Ubiq TV | English News Channel.

COLUMBIA, S.C. (Reuters) – Fresh off a runaway win in the South Carolina primary, Democrat Hillary Clinton turned her sights to a possible match-up with Republican front-runner Donald Trump in the Nov. 8 presidential election.

Without mentioning Trump’s name, the former secretary of state made it clear on Saturday she was already thinking about taking on the real estate mogul whose recent string of victories made him the favourite to be the Republican nominee for the White House race.

Clinton shot down Trump’s campaign slogan of “Make America Great Again” and his plans to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border.

“Despite what you hear, we don’t need to make America great again. America has never stopped being great,” she told supporters in her victory speech in South Carolina, pausing for applause then adding, “but we do need to make America whole again.”

“Instead of building walls, we need to be tearing down barriers,” said Clinton, who would be America’s first woman president.

Clinton said she was not taking anything for granted after crushing Democratic rival Bernie Sanders on Saturday by 48 points and likely setting herself up for a good “Super Tuesday” night on March 1, a key date in the nomination battle.

But if Clinton and Trump win big on Tuesday as polls suggest, the chance of a general election match up between them increases, adding another twist to a presidential campaign that has defied convention as U.S. voters vent frustration over economic uncertainty, illegal immigration and national security threats.

A Trump-Clinton election would embody the outsider vs. establishment battle in American politics. Trump has never been elected to public office, while the former first lady has been a player in Washington for decades.

South Carolina Democratic voter Teri Faust, 59, said Clinton would be better able to take on Trump than Sanders, a U.S. senator from Vermont.

“Bernie wouldn’t stand a chance against him. Hillary is strong,” said Faust, who met Clinton when she came to her church two years ago and again on Clinton’s first campaign trip to the state when she held a roundtable for minority women business owners.

SANDERS DOUBTS

South Carolina was Clinton’s third victory in the first four Democratic contests, raising more questions about whether democratic socialist Sanders will be able to expand his support beyond his base of predominantly white liberals.

Exit polls showed Clinton winning big in the state with almost every constituency. She won 9 of every 10 black voters, as well as women, men, urban, suburban, rural, very liberal and conservative voters. Sanders was ahead among voters between ages 18 and 29, and among white men.

When asked which candidate they thought “can win in November,” an overwhelming 79 percent said Clinton, with only 21 percent putting their faith in Sanders to defeat the eventual Republican nominee.

Sanders, who has energized the party’s liberal wing and brought young people to the polls by attacking income inequality and Wall Street excess, needs a breakthrough win in a key state in the next few weeks to keep his hopes alive.

“He’s got to pull off a surprise against Clinton soon or he won’t have time to recover,” said Phil Noble, a longtime Democratic activist in South Carolina.

He said Sanders’ momentum in South Carolina “fell off the table” after Clinton’s solid victory in Nevada on Feb. 20.

In the Republican race, Trump and rival Marco Rubio accelerated their political slugfest on Saturday during duelling appearances in Arkansas and Georgia.

“The majority of Republican voters do not want Donald Trump to be our nominee, and … they are going to support whoever is left standing that is fighting against him to ensure that we do not nominate a con artist,” Rubio told reporters in Georgia.

Trump, speaking in front of his private plane in Arkansas, belittled Rubio and accused the first-term U.S. senator from Florida of being fresh.

“I watched this lightweight Rubio, total lightweight, little mouth on him, ‘bing, bing, bing’ … and his new attack is he calls me a con artist,” Trump said. “The last thing I am is a con man.”

(Editing by Alistair Bell and Mary Milliken)

The post Clinton has one eye on Trump after huge win in South Carolina appeared first on Ubiq TV | English News Channel.