DURHAM, N.H. — Escalating the brawl that's defined the Democratic primary, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders viciously attacked each other’s progressive credentials at Thursday night’s debate, with Clinton accusing Sanders of smearing her record and treating her differently because she’s a woman.

An uncomfortable Sanders was taken aback, responding, “Whoa, whoa, whoa...wow.”


The former secretary of state was ready to lob some grenades at the Vermont senator, after the two spent much of this week engaging in a war of words.

"If you've got something to say, say it, directly," said Clinton of Sanders' repeated insinuations that she is beholden to her big money donors. "It's time to end the very artful smear that you and your campaign have been carrying out."

Those explosive exchanges — which continued throughout the MSNBC debate — typified the fight between the two candidates who each regularly bristle when confronted with the other's definition of progressivism, or even their Democratic bona fides. The nasty tone showed that Democrats have a heated race on their hands, and that any idea of a Clinton coronation has vaporized.

"A progressive is someone who makes progress," a clearly unhappy Clinton said of Sanders' attempts to paint her as a moderate. "That's what I intend to do." She continued, "I'm a progressive who gets things done. Cherry-picking a quote here or there doesn't change my record."

When Sanders freshly accused Clinton of being part of the “establishment” that he’s railing against, Clinton had a ready response, one that invoked her gender.

“Honestly, Senator Sanders is the only person who I think would characterize me, a woman running to be the first woman president, as exemplifying the establishment,” she said. “It’s really quite amusing to me. People support me because they know me, they know my life’s work. They have worked with me, and many have also worked with Senator Sanders and at the end of the day they endorse me because they know I can get things done.”

Clinton’s accusation came after her campaign has been floating the idea that Sanders and his allies have been engaging in implicitly sexist attacks. With just four days before the New Hampshire primary, Clinton has been ramping up her gender-based appeal and calling out a “Bernie Bro” phenomenon raging online.

“There is a support base for Senator Sanders' candidacy that has been shorthanded as the so-called ‘Bernie Bros,’” said Clinton press secretary Brian Fallon on Thursday. “It can be nasty. It can be vitriolic. And I think that the Sanders campaign needs to beware the extent to which, in an effort to mobilize and galvanize their supporters, they start to let the mentality or the crudeness seep into their own words and criticisms that they hurt at Secretary Clinton.”

Sanders on Thursday night sidestepped Clinton’s accusation of veiled sexist attacks, while not pulling any punches when it came to Clinton’s progressive record. The Vermont senator – a self-described democratic socialist – has maintained an almost myopic focus on income inequality and has clearly chafed at Clinton horning in on his message.

After pledging early on to not engage in any negative attacks on his rival, Sanders has more pointedly called out Clinton for her record and used the poison “E” word – establishment.

“What being part of the establishment is, is, in the last quarter, having a super PAC that raised $15 million from Wall Street, that throughout one's life raised a whole lot of money from the drug companies and other special interests,” he said.

And he dismissed Clinton’s notion that his proposals for free college and universal healthcare are progressive, but not possible. “Now all of the ideas that I'm talking about, they are not radical ideas,” he said.

The rivalry between Clinton and Sanders intensified after Monday’s Iowa caucuses produced the closest Democratic result in history. While the contest was ultimately called for Clinton — with 49.9 percent of the delegate count to Sanders’ 49.6 percent — Sanders’s camp is going precinct to precinct rechecking the results.

At stake is the momentum going into New Hampshire’s primary on Tuesday. Sanders has a double-digit lead in the state, according to the latest post-Iowa polls, but is by no means coasting. And Clinton is playing the expectations game, highlighting how the Vermont senator has home-field advantage, in hopes of being able to offer up a strong second-place finish as a victory.

Clinton’s debate performance on Thursday night showed she’s not willing to leave any points on the table, even as she's eager to talk up Sanders' lead as a way of diminishing the importance of her own deficit and hoping to pump up the potential importance of a comeback.

Bristling at the notion that she is beholden to Wall Street, which she represented as a senator from New York, Clinton said, “I don't think you could find any person in political life today who has been subjected to more attacks and had more money spent against her by special interests, among who you have named a few, than I."

"Today, you’ve got hedge-fund managers aligned with Karl Rove running ads against me to try to get Democrats to vote for you," she added. "I know this game. I’m gonna stop this game. But while we’re talking about votes, you’re the one who voted to deregulate swaps and derivatives.”

Sanders, undeterred, continued railing against Wall Street, repeating his frequent stump speech line about how no banking executives went to jail following the financial crisis, to applause.

"Folks who have looked at this issue for a long time, whether it's Elizabeth Warren or many economists would say yes it is time for new Glass Steagall legislation," Sanders said of the measure on which he and Clinton disagree.

Before long, the conversation pivoted to Clinton's paid speeches between her tenure as secretary of state and her White House run, particularly her addresses to big banks and the $675,000 she collected from Goldman Sachs. Asked directly if she would release the transcripts of her speeches, Clinton said she'd look into it.

But she did acknowledge that she may not have done a great job at explaining her record on Wall Street. She explained that she went on the speaking circuit after leaving government, one that included stops before heart doctors and auto dealers and camping associations, and Wall Street, too.

She also said it’s important to note when she received the speaking fees. “I went to Wall Street before the crash,” she said, adding that she was trying to tell them to clean up their act, knock off the dangerous mortgage practices, and stop paying their CEOs so much.

“I think the best evidence that the Wall Street people at least know where I stand and where I have always stood is because they are trying to beat me in this primary,” she said. “I have a pretty good understanding of how to stop them.”

Sanders wasn’t buying it. He said Clinton is simply too cozy to Wall Street to take bankers on. “Wall Street is perhaps the most powerful economic and political force in this country,” she said.

But once the debate turned to foreign policy, Sanders was clearly on less comfortable ground against the former top diplomat.

Addressing the issue of fighting the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, Sanders referenced Clinton's vote as a senator to authorize the invasion of Iraq.

Clinton was ready to attack.

That invasion, Sanders averred, created "barbaric organizations like ISIS."

"Not only did I vote against that war, I helped lead the opposition," he said, referring viewers to his website to watch his statement from 2002 in which he predicted the outcome of a U.S. invasion to topple Saddam Hussein. "It gives me no pleasure to tell you that much of what I feared would happen the day after Saddam Hussein was overthrown, did happen."

Clinton fired back, remarking that the two "did differ" in their Senate votes 14 years ago.

"A vote in 2002 is not a plan to defeat ISIS. We have to look at the threats that we face right now, and we have to be prepared to take them on and defeat them," she replied.

But when the conversation turned to Clinton's emails — a topic Sanders has refused to hit her on despite Republican's insistence that it's a crucial topic — the candidates struck a tone of agreement, insisting that it not be politicized.

And when Sanders was asked to answer for a series of issues that have cropped up among his campaign workers — from the DNC data breach, to misrepresenting themselves as Culinary Union workers in Las Vegas, to apparently falsely suggesting a New Hampshire newspaper had endorsed him — the senator labored through his explanations.

Did Clinton want to respond, asked moderator Chuck Todd?

"No."