Immediately after her opening statement, Clinton brought up an interview Sanders gave this month to the editorial board of the New York Daily News. She claimed that Sanders wasn't really prepared to discuss financial reform -- a central plank in his platform.

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"Talk about the kinds of problems he had answering questions about even his core issue, breaking up the banks," she said. "When asked, he could not explain how that would be done."

In fact, Sanders explained precisely how he thought the banks should be broken up in the interview with the Daily News, offering a couple of possibilities.

"How you go about doing it is having legislation passed," Sanders said in the Daily News interview, "or giving the authority to the secretary of Treasury to determine, under Dodd-Frank, that these banks are a danger to the economy over the problem of too-big-to-fail."

A moment after Clinton's comment, Dana Bash, one of CNN's moderators, asked Sanders for more details about that interview, asking why he had not answered one of the Daily News's questions about exactly what form the banks would take after they were broken up.

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Sanders -- in agreement with most liberal and conservative experts on Wall Street who advocate dissolving the banks -- explained that while the government could give broad instructions to the banks, such as that they must not be above a certain size, the details would be up to the employees of the banks and their managers.

"I don't know that it's appropriate for the Department of the Treasury to be making those decisions," Sanders said.

Finally, Clinton attacked Sanders for voting for legislation that helped deregulate markets in derivatives and futures -- an omnibus, 11,000-page bill that dealt with a broad range of subjects and that President Bill Clinton signed into law. Members of the Clinton administration helped draft the specific provision for which Hillary Clinton is now criticizing Sanders (and which Bill Clinton has said he regrets).

Clinton's implications that Sanders doesn't know Wall Street and hasn't been a fierce opponent of the banking industry throughout his career seem unlikely to persuade Democratic voters in New York, who go to the polls in the state's primary next week.

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Sanders, however, arguably stumbled when he was asked to explain why he thought the payments Clinton has received from Wall Street made her untrustworthy.

Bash asked him to give a single example of a decision Clinton had made that showed she put the banks' interest before the public. He responded by mentioning the speeches Clinton gave at Goldman Sachs, for which the firm reimbursed her -- but he did not give an example of a decision Clinton had made in any official capacity.

"He cannot come up with any example, because there is none," Clinton replied. (Her liberal opponents might cite her support, as secretary of state, for President Obama's trade deal in the Pacific -- support which she has since withdrawn.)

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When it comes to substance, though, the candidates appear to be largely in agreement. Both said that, if victorious in November, they would use the legal options created by the Dodd-Frank financial reform and take action to break up the banks.

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"If elected president, I will break them up. We've got legislation," Sander said. "End of discussion."

"We can never let Wall Street wreck Main Street again," Clinton said. "We have the law. We've got to execute under it."

As she has done before, she also promised to appoint regulators who would take a hard line on the banks -- a crucial demand of liberal activists who want to see the banks dissolved. In order to achieve that goal, a president would need to put people in office who are prepared to enforce the rules aggressively.

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For voters concerned that New York will once again become the center of a global financial crisis, the choice next week will come down to whom they believe and whom they think will deliver.