Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, in their sixth Democratic presidential debate, described a dark and ugly America — a place consumed by racism, sexism, unjust imprisonment, cruelty to immigrants and oppression by the rich.

It’s worth a reminder that their guy has run the government for the past seven years.

The Thursday night debate also featured several sharper exchanges between the two than in past encounters and a competition to see which one could pander the most to black and Latino voters as the primary race shifts beyond mostly white Iowa and New Hampshire.

More from LifeZette TV

MORE NEWS: PA Supreme Court Rules Mail-In Ballots May Be Counted Three Days After Election

Perhaps most striking, Sanders — the Democratic socialist from Vermont — tried desperately to accentuate his differences with the former secretary of state while Clinton tried desperately to obscure them. Nine times during the exchange, Clinton used a variation of the word “agree” to describe how her position on an issue matched Sanders’ position. Two times, she said they didn’t disagree, another time she said they had the same position, and three times, she said they shared the same goal.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QMiTKvxp9sU”]

Do you agree that protesting is acceptable, but rioting is not? Yes No Email Address (required) By completing the poll, you agree to receive emails from LifeZette and that you've read and agree to our privacy policy and legal statement Results Vote

Latino voters in Nevada on Feb. 20 and black voters in South Carolina on Feb. 27 will have a critical impact on the outcome of the Sanders-Clinton race.

Clinton decried “systemic racism” in Wisconsin, where the debate was held. She claimed race relations had improved under President Obama — a claim only 21 percent of Americans agreed with, according to a New York Times/CBS News poll in July — and said cellphone cameras merely had made long-existing problems more visible.

“So, we are seeing the dark side of the remaining systemic racism that we have to root out in our society,” she said.

“Clearly we are looking at institutional racism,” Sanders said. As always, he invoked Wall Street as the source of the nation’s problems, even the plight of poor African-Americans. “What has to be appreciated is that, as a result of the disastrous and illegal behavior on Wall Street, millions of lives were hurt,” he said. “As I understand it, the African-American community lost half of their wealth as a result of the Wall Street collapse.”

MORE NEWS: Maine Police searching for woman who left dog poop in mailboxes of Trump supporters: Defaced campaign signs

That blacks may be suffering due to the big-government “solutions” Sanders proscribes would never occur to him.

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsi6jFgFhHg”]

Sanders also blamed racism for the nation’s high incarceration rate. His proposed solutions include sentencing reform — specifically, releasing half a million prisoners — the “demilitarization” of police, more minority law enforcement officers and an end to “over-policing” in black neighborhoods. This runs counter to the findings of a Gallup poll in August, in which only 10 percent of blacks wanted a smaller police presence in their neighborhoods.

Sanders also made this promise: “At the end of my first term as president, we will not have more people in jail than any other country.” He did not explain how he could possibly achieve that, since about 91 percent of prisoners are held in state, local or tribal facilities over which the president has no control.

Clinton and Sanders also raced to the Left on immigration. Both supported Obama’s executive action — currently blocked by the courts — to issue green cards to millions of illegal immigrants. Both vowed to go further, promising to push for a new law to offer a path to citizenship for virtually all illegal immigrants.

[lz_related_box id=”105402″]

Clinton said called for compassion for “hard-working immigrant families living in fear, who should be brought out of the shadows so they and their children can have a better future.”

Sanders criticized the Obama administration’s decision to send back children who came by the tens of thousands, unaccompanied by adults, in 2014.

On the one hand, Clinton defended the deportations on the grounds they sent a message to parents in Central America that they not to send their kids on a dangerous journey to the U.S. border. On the other hand, she called for the federal government to provide lawyers for every unaccompanied minor who makes it to the U.S. border.

Clinton suggested that jackbooted stormtroopers are regularly kicking down doors, frightening young children out of their wits.

“I am against the raids,” she said. “I’m against the kind of inhumane treatment that is now being visited upon families, waking them up in the middle of the night, rounding them up.”

But Sanders said he opposed returning the unaccompanied minors home at all. “These are children who are leaving countries and neighborhoods where their lives are at stake,” he said. “That was the fact. I don’t think we use them to send a message.”

[lz_third_party includes=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vn3JjuthS48″]

Clinton deflected questions about comments by prominent supporters who seemed to disparage young women who supported Sanders. She said she was not asking for votes on the basis of gender, but then moments later made an overt appeal to gender. She said Thursday was the first time in 200 presidential primary debates where “there have been a majority of women on the stage (including the moderators). “So, you know, we’ll take our progress wherever we can find it.”