It will be remembered as the Brooklyn Brawl — and neither Hillary Clinton nor Bernie Sanders offered any pretense that it was anything other than that.

Each demeaned the character, judgment and veracity of the other in Thursday night’s Democratic debate in the New York presidential primary. The two-hour CNN debate was a bruising slugfest, acrimonious and riveting from beginning to end.

“If you’re both screaming at each other,” CNN moderator Wolf Blitzer interjected at one point, “the viewers won’t be able to hear either one of you.”

Well, it is New York — an in-your-face kind of town. And there’s a lot at stake ahead of Tuesday’s vote. Not just delegates, but also standing with the voters.

Clinton represented New York in the Senate for eight years, and has her campaign headquarters in Brooklyn. Sanders was born and raised in Brooklyn. She needs a convincing win, somewhere in the double digits. He needs to shrink her margin to single digits, something like five points. And if somehow he were to win New York … well, if he can make it there, he can make it anywhere.

Sanders is the self-described socialist senator from Vermont, and he proposes what he calls a new American revolution. But to many Canadian ears, he doesn’t sound much like a scary socialist when he points to the Canadian model of single-payer universal health care.

“I live 50 miles from Canada, you know,” he declared at one point. “It’s not some kind of communist authoritarian country. They’re doing okay. They got a health care system that guarantees health to all people. We can do the same.”

At 74, he looks and sounds like a cranky grandfather, but he’s a rock star to many young and working class voters. The college cohort love it that he’s proposing tuition-free public universities so they can be spared crushing debt upon graduation.

In Canada, where tuition fees are already quite affordable (ridiculously low in Quebec), students were big winners in last month’s federal Liberal budget. The Canada Student Loans Program is being revamped for students from low and middle income families, while the student grants are being increased by 50 per cent. There’s nothing scary or socialist about it. Sanders would be right at home.

Sanders has forced Clinton to raise her game, and protect her flank on the left of the Democratic Party. Rather than a coronation, she’s in a contest, and a better candidate for it. Sanders has forced Clinton to raise her game, and protect her flank on the left of the Democratic Party. Rather than a coronation, she’s in a contest, and a better candidate for it.

He would increase the minimum wage to $15, something Tom Mulcair just ran on in the Canadian election. And Sanders is opposed to any and all trade agreements, from NAFTA to the Trans-Pacific Partnership. This is music to the ears of trade unionists everywhere.

Sanders is the scourge of Wall Street, shouting that banks are not too big to fail, though he’s vague on how he would reform the financial services industry.

But where he really differentiates himself from Clinton is on campaign finance reform. He essentially says that she’s in the pocket of the banks, having accepted $15 million in campaign donations and another $2 million in speaking fees from Wall Street. Sanders doesn’t accept corporate donations, attend fund-raisers or charge for speeches.

If he wants campaign finance reform in the U.S., he could do worse than consider the Canadian model adopted 10 years ago, which bans corporate and union donations and limits individual donations to $1,500. But on the home front, he’d have to contend with the 2010 ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court allowing unlimited corporate donations, which led to the proliferation of super PACS.

All of which has given Sanders distance from Clinton — and he rolled it all into one sound bite Thursday.

“I do question her judgment,” he declared. “I question the judgment that voted for the war in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country, (which) voted for every disastrous trade agreement, which cost us millions of decent-paying jobs. And I question her judgment about running super PACs which are collecting tens of millions of dollars from special interests, including $15 million from Wall Street.” The live audience loved the red meat.

As for Clinton, she gave as good as she got. In truth, Sanders has forced her to raise her game, and protect her flank on the left of the Democratic Party. Rather than a coronation, she’s in a contest, and a better candidate for it.

There’s no doubt that the math of a contested convention remains unlikely for Sanders. It takes 2,382 delegates to win the nomination, and Clinton already has 1,758, including 469 automatic super delegates. For his part, Sanders has 1,069 delegates, which includes only 31 super delegates.

While he’s been on a roll, winning eight of the last nine caucuses and primaries, his odds remain long. Democratic delegates are elected proportionally according to the vote. In New York, for example, there are 247 delegates, plus 44 super delegates, most of whom will support Clinton. But there’s four more primary states the following week, and another Super Tuesday on June 7 including primaries in delegate-rich California and New Jersey.

What does Sanders gain by staying in all the way to the convention in Philadelphia? He gets a floor fight and a say in the party’s platform. He gets to make a speech at the convention.

And he can well afford to stay in. Last month, with average personal donations of just $27, he raised $44 million, nearly $15 million more than Clinton. Which must be making Hillary’s people crazy.

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