WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 09th February, 2020) Frontrunner Senator Bernie Sanders along with fellow Senators Amy Klobuchar and Elizabeth Warren came out strong, winning repeated loud applause at the debate of the seven leading Democratic presidential candidates in the city of Manchester of the US state of New Hampshire.
In only four more days, the first real Primary election test of Democratic voters' preferences will be held in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
The biggest loser of the debate on Friday night was a man who was not even present, late-declaring candidate and former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
Most of the seven frontrunning candidates participating in the debate at St. Anselm's College in Manchester ganged up on Bloomberg, who is pouring hundreds of millions of Dollars into a national television advertising campaign.
Although most of the seven candidates are either millionaires or married to millionaires (Klobuchar is not), they agreed that Bloomberg, the founder and owner of Bloomberg news with an estimated personal worth of $35 billion should not be allowed to buy his way into the party's presidential nomination.
"I don't think anyone ought to be able to buy their way into being President of the United States,'" Warren said to strong applause.
The debate was held the same week after the deadlocked and confused Iowa caucuses on Monday, in which Sanders won the most votes by a margin of 6,000 over South Bend, Indiana Mayor Pete Buttigieg.
Buttigieg nevertheless just won marginally more delegates than Sanders in Iowa, 26.1 percent to 26.1 percent, with Warren coming back into third place with 18 percent.
Buttigieg in the New Hampshire debate preached his usual slogan of "a politics of addition and inclusion, not one that hits people on the head."
However, Klobuchar took aim at one of his main selling points as an attractive newcomer to national US politics.
Klobuchar and other candidates had previously stressed the importance of experience in selecting a president. But on this occasion, she won loud applause when she compared Buttigieg's newcomer appeal to President Donald Trump.
"I just I don't think that's what people want right now. We have a newcomer in the White House. And look where it got us," she said.
Former Vice President Joe Biden has been the frontrunner in Democratic voters' preferences in polls since the start of the campaign. However, he was relegated to fourth place in Iowa with 15 percent and he acknowledged in the debate he did not expect to win in New Hampshire on Tuesday.
Biden had been subject to aggressive attacks from other candidates in previous debates. They treated him with far more respect and good manners on Friday, but that was in the context of his apparently fading campaign.
New Hampshire, another small, low population state has an impoverished, working-class and its economic problems may favor Sanders' more socialist and populist policies.
Warren coming strong out of Iowa had a strong debate on Friday, winning repeated rounds of applause.
From audience reaction, she got the better of Buttigieg when he fumbled a question from a moderator on why arrests and incarcerations of African-Americans in South Bend had risen seriously since he became mayor.
After Buttigieg obfuscated an unclear answer, the moderator asked Warren if she thought Buttigieg had adequately answered the question. Warren strongly and clearly, simply answered "No" to enthusiastic applause.
Hedge fund manager and billionaire Tom Steyer only has one percent support among registered Democrats in national polls but he had a strong debate with several well-received interventions and proposals.
Millionaire businessman Andrew Yang did well in the previous sixth debate but was unable to translate that into any significant support in Iowa. He had the least impact on the debate in New Hampshire and looked as if he would have rather been elsewhere.
