Sen. Bernie Sanders argues a point during the Brown & Black Forum on Monday Jan. 11 in Des Moines, Iowa. Clinton, Sanders try to spice up their duel Despite only limited differences on policy, they try to draw sharp lines and meaningful distinctions.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders don’t differ much on core Democratic issues, but with the Iowa caucuses three weeks away, both are intensifying their attacks to a level not seen during a pillow-fight 2015.

Clinton and Sanders, locked in a too-close-to-call contest, crisscrossed a hard-frozen state Monday telling supporters how very much they respected and liked each other — all the while hammering away on differences that seem minuscule compared with the bitter arguments that have riven the GOP field.


The battle isn’t just about winning voters — both campaigns need to create a sense of urgency to fire up the thousands of volunteers and canvassers needed to master the arcane rules of labor-intensive caucuses.

Trump Time it isn’t — and both take great pains to emphasize their civility in a state that prides itself on elevating the national discourse.

But Clinton attacked Sanders — at times by name — portraying him as a naive socialist who is wrong on health care and a hypocrite on guns, and the Vermont senator sharpened his criticism of Clinton as a Wall Street enabler and declared that Clinton’s campaign is in “serious trouble” at a fiery rally on Monday.

“I think it’s time for us to have the kind of spirited debate that you deserve for us to have,” Clinton told a crowd of about 300, many of them over the age of 50, in Waterloo on Monday morning. “We’re so much better than the Republicans,” she said — a day after her staff bombarded reporters with emails about Sanders’ votes on gun laws, “but we do have differences, and you deserve to know what those differences are.”

An NBC/Wall Street Journal poll released Sunday found that Clinton’s once-comfortable lead in the state has dwindled to 3 percentage points among likely voters — with the former secretary of state leading Sanders 48 percent to 45 percent and Martin O’Malley garnering 5 percent. Among potential Democratic caucus-goers, Clinton’s advantage expands to a 49 percent to 43 percent — down from 11 points in October.

On Monday night came another development that’s increasing dyspepsia in the Clinton ranks: Joe Biden — continuing his don’t-you-wish-I-was-running-instead tour — seemed to side against Clinton during a characteristically unrestrained interview on CNN.

“I think that — that Bernie is speaking to a yearning that is deep and real, and he has credibility on it,” he told political analyst Gloria Borger. “And that is the absolute enormous concentration of wealth in a small group of people with the middle class now being able to be shown being left out. … It’s relatively new for Hillary to talk about that. Hillary’s focus has been other things up to now, and that’s been Bernie’s — no one questions Bernie’s authenticity on those issues.”

Sanders — who famously said during the first Democratic debate that Americans didn’t care about Clinton’s “damn emails” — has tried to portray himself as the victim of a vicious and coordinated Clinton attack machine. It’s worked before: Eight years ago in Iowa, Barack Obama, whose campaign quietly shuttled reams of opposition research to reporters, successfully portrayed Clinton as an old-school political mudslinger.

At the Iowa Brown & Black Forum, an event on black and Hispanic issues that capped off the day, Sanders was asked whether Clinton’s tone was getting “tougher.”

“Yes!” he said — and then proceeded to give as good as he got.

Earlier, a high school student in rural Pleasantville asked Sanders, “What is the biggest policy difference between you and Mrs. Clinton?” during a Q & A that drew 500 mostly young people to the rural town a half-hour’s drive south of Des Moines.

“Good,” he responded — spring-loaded to draw the contrast in a contest that could determine his viability as a long-term candidate. “If you look at foreign policy, she voted for the war in Iraq, I voted against it. In terms of Wall Street, I regard Wall Street as a very dangerous institution in this country.”

He listed his support for restoration of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Roosevelt-era bank regulation repealed during Bill Clinton’s second term. “She disagrees.”

He also hit her on trade issues: “I was a leader in opposition to the [Trans-Pacific Partnership], she came on that issue very, very late,” he said. “Keystone pipeline — I was one of the opponents of it, she came on very, very late.”

Still, both candidates took pains to emphasize how much they really like each other. “The differences between Secretary Clinton and myself pale in terms of the differences between us and Donald Trump,” Sanders said in Pleasantville — and Clinton spoke almost exactly the same words, at nearly the same time, 150 miles away in Waterloo.

Snowy Iowa is white this time of year — actually it’s white every time of year. Yet the fifth-whitest state in the country plays host to the Iowa Brown & Black Forum — in which panelists grilled the three Democrats still standing on issues ranging from President Obama’s controversial deportation policy to black reparations and white privilege.

Both candidates had their stumbles at the event, held at Drake University and broadcast by the Fusion television network. Sanders continued to defend his 2005 vote to grant immunity to gun manufacturers — even after moderator Jorge Ramos repeatedly pressed him to admit it was a mistake. “No,” Sanders said.

And Clinton continued to struggle with her position on the Obama administration’s plan to deport hundreds of recently arrived immigrants whose asylum claims have been rejected. O’Malley and Sanders came out against the policy when it was leaked to The Washington Post in December — but Clinton waited until Monday’s forum to break with Obama on a policy she had tacitly supported during her tenure as secretary of state.

Republicans — for all of their infighting — have been able to unite around their shared disdain for the Clintons. The Democrats have found their conflict-defusing foil — a certain real estate developer-turned-reality TV star-turned-poll-leader.

When one of the moderators asked Clinton what she had bought Trump for his wedding gift — she replied, “Nothing,” then expressed her astonishment at his success, considering he was “really more of a Democrat” than a Republican in her assessment.

“Anybody can win!” she said. “Who would have thought Donald Trump would be leading. … For those of you who ever thought about running for president, take heart.”

