CHARLESTON, S.C. — It’s time for closing arguments.

With just two weeks until the first votes are cast, tensions between the campaigns of Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are boiling over. Polls show the races are neck and neck in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the contest is taking a nasty turn, with Clinton’s camp questioning not only Sanders’ policy positions but his fitness for office.


Sanders, in turn, is eager to rekindle Democrats’ progressive instincts by reminding them of Clinton’s Wall Street ties, reliance on big-money donors and her vote in support of the Iraq war.

So, as Sanders rides a tide of intensified news coverage and improving poll numbers and Clinton battens down the hatches to avoid a repeat of 2008, here are the five things Democratic insiders are watching for when the candidates take the stage Sunday night in South Carolina.

1. An Obama love-fest

Clinton’s stump speech has long featured a prominent passage about how President Barack Obama doesn’t get the credit he deserves in rescuing the American economy. But in recent weeks his former secretary of state has been amping up her pro-White House rhetoric, seeking to tie herself even more closely to the popular president in the eyes of Democratic primary voters — a tactic that could intensify during the debate.

Clinton’s open-arms embrace makes sense: The most recent Des Moines Register/Bloomberg Politics poll of Democratic likely caucus-goers showed Obama at a whopping 91 percent approval rating. But it’s especially potent in South Carolina, where Clinton will rely heavily on the large African-American population that likes her and remains loyal to the president.

The Clinton campaign released an ad praising Obama for his gun control policies, and its South Carolina staff has been distributing materials depicting Clinton and Obama together. Clinton has also suggested that Sanders’ recent ad on Wall Street reform implicitly criticizes Obama because of his own relationship with banks.

Clinton will also use gun policy to paint Sanders as out of step with Obama. She will likely make some reference to their debate location, just a block from the Emanuel AME Church where nine black churchgoers were killed in June.

2. How Sanders handles stardom

Matching Clinton in polls, Sanders has picked up the nearly Trumplike tactic of reading survey numbers aloud during some of his appearances. And, particularly in Iowa, the senator has started telling voters that he believes he’ll win there.

It’s a curious case of managing expectations: Clinton’s staff has stressed for months that it doesn’t expect wins in either state, keeping in mind the lessons of her 2008 collapse, and it has raised serious questions among some party influentials about how Sanders is handling his star turn while getting more and more national coverage.

If he cheers his own success on the debate stage, it could turn off voters who are on the fence, some Sanders sympathizers warned, and it could unduly raise expectations. If he lets too many mentions of his success seep into his policy fights with Clinton, it might annoy Iowans who currently like him for his much-trumpeted political purity.

It also opens him to an attack Clinton’s camp has been trying to make stick: that Sanders is a typical politician, not some high-minded reformer.

“On Bernie’s side and his critique of Wall Street and Glass-Steagall, he draws a difference there. It’s not mean, it’s issue-oriented, and there’s nothing personal,” said Bob Shrum, a former senior adviser to the presidential bids of John Kerry and Al Gore, warning of the difference between a policy-based contrast and one that slips into Clinton criticism. “Iowa voters in the Democratic caucus really hate personal attacks.”

3. Gun policy positioning

Gun control has been one of the animating topics of Democratic race for months, and the dispute between Sanders and Clinton will almost certainly come to a head in Charleston, especially after Sanders on Saturday night backed an amendment to legislation associated with one of his most controversial votes.

Clinton has repeatedly criticized Sanders over his past votes against the Brady Bill and his 2005 vote to limit liability for gun manufacturers, and Sanders now says he backs tweaks to that law, apparently seeking to lessen his vulnerability on the topic.

Sitting so close to Emanuel AME, moderators Lester Holt and Andrea Mitchell are expected to question Sanders on his vote for the so-called Charleston Loophole that Clinton has tied to the deaths at that church last year.

Gun control is an important issue to the party’s black voters, according to national polls, and local Democratic officials say it is particularly significant in the Charleston area — which also experienced the shooting death of Walter Scott by a police officer in April.

Sanders has struggled to connect with African-American voters — who make up more than half the state’s Democratic primary electorate — and the pressure will be on the insurgent candidate to defend his record against Clinton’s attacks.

If he can’t convincingly make the case that he stands with Obama on gun violence, he could face even more trouble with the minority voters he will need in his corner after Iowa and New Hampshire, suggest Democrats aligned with each of the campaigns.

4. A pivot to electability

Both campaigns are preparing for the moment they are asked about their viability against a Republican nominee, now that polls show Sanders performing better against potential GOP candidates after months of Clinton dominance.

The electability fight has increasingly become a part of Sanders’ campaign routine, but Clinton’s allies respond to his polling strength against Republicans by noting that she has been the subject of their attacks for decades, and he has never faced a similar level of scrutiny.

But people close to the Clinton camp are eager for her to avoid making arguments similar to the ones she tried against Obama in 2008.

5. Off-script scrapping

Tonight’s debate is likely to be far messier than Democrats’ three previous forums. Campaign insiders expect fewer scripted and rehearsed lines simply because the candidates have had far less time to prepare for this round, with a hectic week of stumping before a packed weekend that included two party dinners and a series of television interviews.

The scheduling quirk may make the candidates’ zingers a bit less zippy, but it doesn’t mean they won’t be going after each other.

Clinton and Sanders have for months tried to run a civil race and mainly criticize their Republican rivals rather than each other. But as Clinton’s lead has disappeared and her team begins to fear a repeat of 2008, their tussles have become rougher. Where once campaign aides and surrogates were expected to lob the nastier insults, now the candidates themselves are leading the charge.

“It’s much more toxic if you’re going after one another personally,” said former Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, an adviser to a pro-Clinton super PAC, explaining that the debate had not yet gotten intensely personal, but it could. “You look online, and if there is a hint on any side of a personal attack, people go crazy, the followers.”

