WASHINGTON - Six U.S. Democratic presidential candidates traded barbs with each other in a tense debate late Tuesday, attempting to make the case to voters in the farm state of Iowa that they alone have the political fortitude and skill to take on Republican President Donald Trump in the November national election.
With heightened world tensions between the U.S. and Iran, Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, a self-described democratic socialist, quickly attacked the foreign policy credentials of the party's national front-runner for the presidential nomination, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Sanders derided Biden's 2002 vote authorizing the U.S. invasion of Iraq on what proved to be erroneous American intelligence that deposed dictator Saddam Hussein was amassing weapons of mass destruction, while Sanders opposed the the 2003 invasion.
He said Biden voted for the "worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country."
Biden, who for years has said his Iraq vote was a mistake, countered that while he had erred, as former U.S. President Barack Obama's second in command, he worked to bring home more than 150,000 U.S. troops once stationed in Iraq and to end the conflict.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota said that she, as a candidate early in her political career, also opposed the Iraq invasion, while accusing Trump of "taking us pell-mell toward another war," in the current conflict over the U.S. leader's changing rationale for ordering a drone strike that killed Iranian Quds Force commander Qassem Soleimani.
A key challenger to both Biden and Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, a one-time Harvard law professor, and others said they would move to bring thousands of U.S. troops home from the Middle East, at odds with Trump's recent dispatch of more forces to the region. Warren said, "We have to stop this mindset that the answer" to world's trouble spots is to send U.S. troops overseas. Asked whether she would leave some combat troops in the Middle East, she replied: "No, we have to get them out."
Sanders said, "The American people are sick and tired of endless wars."
Former South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg, the only war-time veteran on the debate stage, said he could best serve as the country's commander in chief, because "the lessons of the past are personal to me." Wealthy environmentalist Tom Steyer contended that Trump "obviously has no strategy" in dealing with Iran and agreed with Biden that it would take the efforts of an international coalition to rein in its nuclear ambitions.
Tuesday's debate stage had the fewest number of candidates since the face-to-face encounters began last June. It was also the first with all white contenders, after black, Latino and Asian candidates have either dropped out of the race for lack of voter support and campaign money or failed to qualify for the debate stage. Tom Perez, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, insists his party is committed to diversity and that the initial field of roughly 20 candidates featured "the most diverse field in American history."
It was the seventh debate, but the last before Democrats in rural Iowa in the U.S. heartland cast the first votes in the party's months-long nomination process, at night-time caucuses less than three weeks from now, on Feb. 3.
Contests in other states are just ahead on the political calendar. But Iowa, even though its predominantly white 3 million population is at odds with the increasingly racially diverse U.S. demographics, draws out-sized national attention because it is first in the once-every-four-years presidential sweepstakes.
Warren and Sanders sparred sharply over a private conversation they had more than a year ago in which Warren claims that Sanders questioned whether a woman can defeat Trump to become the first female U.S. president.
Sanders denied making the remark and said no one believes a woman can't win, noting that Democrat Hillary Clinton out-polled Trump by nearly 3 million votes in 2016, while losing the vote in the country's state-by-state electoral college system of electing presidents.
When she was asked what she thought when Sanders told her a woman couldn't defeat Trump in 2020, Warren responded: "I disagreed."
Warren said that the male candidates on the debate stage had collectively lost 10 elections during their lifetimes, while the two women, herself and Klobuchar, are undefeated.