Hillary Clinton makes a point as Bernie Sanders listens during a Democratic presidential primary debate. | AP Photo Debate Night Debate exposes Clinton's Wall Street underbelly The debate's flashpoints suggested a party more animated by its antipathy toward big banks than any other subject.

DES MOINES, Iowa — The widespread expectation was that Saturday evening’s Democratic debate would revolve around the Paris attacks. But it turned out Wall Street policy ended up driving the most striking moments here — painting a picture of a party animated most by its antipathy toward big banks, but divided over how to handle them.

Accordingly, a discussion of bank regulation led to the sharpest clashes between the candidates — not to mention accusations of dirty tactics — and it was Hillary Clinton’s relationship with the financial community she once represented that provided perhaps the most memorable, and questionable, moment of the evening, when she invoked the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.


“I represented New York, and I represented New York on 9/11 when we were attacked,” Clinton said, explaining her support from finance-world contributors. “Where were we attacked? We were attacked in downtown Manhattan, where Wall Street is. I did spend a whole lot of time and effort helping them rebuild. That was good for New York. It was good for the economy, and it was a way to rebuke the terrorists who had attacked our country.”

That remark, in the words of Bernie Sanders’ top Iowa official, Robert Becker, was “a sort of defining moment. … It was a major turning point.”

Clinton and Sanders clashed most clearly on the topic after moderator John Dickerson of CBS News asked the Vermont senator whether he was satisfied by Clinton’s insistence that she is not beholden to her legions of Wall Street donors.

“Not good enough,” said the de facto leader of the party’s progressive wing, to applause.

“Let’s not be naive about it. Why do — why, over her political career, has Wall Street been a major — the major — campaign contributor to Hillary Clinton? You know, maybe they’re dumb and they don’t know what they’re going to get, but I don’t think so.”

Sanders expanded on his call to break up big banks and reinstitute the Glass-Steagall Act before Clinton shot back: “He has basically used his answer to impugn my integrity.”

“No, I have not,” Sanders responded, not looking particularly surprised at the turn of events.

“Oh, wait a minute, senator,” Clinton said, seemingly fired up by the exchange, which served as a microcosm of a larger debate the party has been having during the ascendancy of figures like liberal hero and bank antagonist Elizabeth Warren.

She said she has “hundreds of thousands of donors, most of them small. And I’m very proud that for the first time a majority of my donors are women, 60 percent.”

The back-and-forth, which was the most mentioned moment of the night, according to data provided by Facebook, highlighted a vulnerability Clinton has been eager to defend: the notion that her representation of Wall Street as a senator from New York, and the campaign cash that comes along with that, compromises her.

To her rivals’ top strategists, the implication was clear: She is out of step with the party, and the Wall Street question is a campaign-defining issue.

“It’s one of the central, defining differences between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders,” Sanders strategist Mark Longabaugh said after the debate. “Secretary Clinton’s response on multiple occasions was not quite up to par.”

Bill Hyers, chief strategist for Martin O’Malley, agreed in an interview: “Secretary Clinton had a lot of explaining to do on the subject. A lot of the Democratic Party is in agreement, and she’s not.”

But to Clinton’s own top aides, the interaction was another example of the front-runner’s rivals seizing any opportunity to knock her down, rather than a legitimate complaint about her close ties to the financial industry.

“There was an attempt to impugn her character, what she was trying to explain is that she has a lot of supporters from all over the country,” Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook said. “She has a plan that’s just as tough as anyone else’s. In fact hers is, I would argue, tougher. And that was an unfair attack.”

When asked by POLITICO about the centrality of Wall Street to the debate, and specifically whether it was fair for rivals to be offended by Clinton's remark about 9/11, Clinton’s top strategist Joel Benenson said, "I don't know that people were offended by that. I think what you heard tonight is people attacking her integrity and saying she's the senator from Wall Street, and what she said is there are people in that community who support her because after that community was devastated in the attacks on 9/11, she led the charge as the senator from New York to go in and rebuild that whole downtown area."

"Remember, New Yorkers lost 3,000 people that day, that region lost 3,000 people. One company alone lost 600 people, and what she said — and everybody's ignoring it — what she said is, there are people here who disagree with [her] because they know she'll take on Wall Street," Benenson added. "They know she led the fight to help rebuild that area, and she was standing up to rebuild an area that was struck, not anything else."

Nonetheless, it was that subsequent exchange — where she introduced the attacks of Sept. 11 into her answer — that Democrats and Republicans alike predicted would resonate long after the debate.

Clinton’s seemingly out-of-the-blue 9/11 invocation didn’t sit well with her rivals’ campaigns and some observers, who suggested it was a crass way to justify her economic backing from financiers.

“I don’t know about that, I just don’t know,” said Becker, shaking his head. “I’ve been asked about it. I do know that she’s taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions and speaking fees and I do know that Bernie Sanders has been constantly fighting Wall Street. … You’ll have to ask her.”

David Axelrod, President Barack Obama’s top political strategist and a frequent Clinton campaign critic, was quick to tweet: “@HillaryClinton vehemently offers support for Wall Street as post-911 recovery effort. Does that fly?”

The answer, to Benenson — Axelrod’s colleague on Obama’s campaigns — was a clear “yes.”

Yet the Clinton team's explanation of the sudden and unexpected moment at the Drake University debate site was unconvincing at best to her rivals, and to pundits who expect to hear more of it as the nomination battle — and perhaps general election fight — drags on.

“As soon as she invoked 9/11 it was going to come back up,” said Hyers. “Using 9/11 to defend Wall Street contributions is just out of bounds. It was taken that way. And I think it’s going to dominate the conversation for a couple days.”