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Bloomberg Targeted at Democratic Presidential Debate

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - Six U.S. Democratic presidential candidates squared off in
   a contentious debate late Wednesday, with billionaire former New York
   Mayor Michael Bloomberg the target of sharp attacks from his
   challengers in their first face-to-face encounter.

   Senators Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota
   immediately accused Bloomberg of trying to buy the Democratic
   nomination by spending nearly $400 million of his own money on a
   massive national political advertising campaign, even as he skips party
   nominating contests in four states this month where Democrats are
   casting the first votes to eventually pick a nominee in July.

   Klobuchar said she did not think American voters look at Republican
   President Donald Trump and say "we need someone richer" like Bloomberg,
   the world's 12th-richest person.

   Bloomberg, in his first political debate since 2009, when he last ran
   for mayor of the country's largest city, responded that he did not
   inherit wealth like Trump, but earned it by founding and operating his
   eponymous business information company.

   "Now I'm spending that money to get rid of Donald Trump, the worst
   president the country has ever had," Bloomberg said.

   Sanders, who is leading in the national polls and won the popular vote
   in the first two primary tests this month in Iowa and New Hampshire,
   argued that he was best equipped to attract the largest voter turnout
   in history to unseat Trump in the November general election.

   However, Bloomberg swiftly attacked Sanders, a self-described
   democratic socialist, as unelectable in November's national election
   against Trump, in part because of Sanders' proposed government-funded
   universal health care program, "Medicare for all," that could possibly
   eliminate private insurance coverage for 160 million Americans.

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