From left, Democratic presidential candidates former South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., former Vice President Joe Biden, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., stand on stage Friday, Feb. 7, 2020, before the start of a Democratic presidential primary debate hosted by ABC News, Apple News, and WMUR-TV at Saint Anselm College in Manchester, N.H. (AP Photo/Elise Amendola)

MANCHESTER – Mere hours before New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation presidential primary, most polls are showing a close race on the Democratic side, leaving some candidates hopeful and others nervous.

Some of this was on display during the, at times, heated debate that took place late Friday at Saint Anselm College in Manchester. Whether the issue was health care, taxes, experience or campaign contributions, friction was frequent during the event featuring:

• Joe Biden of Delaware

• Pete Buttigieg of Indiana

• Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts

• Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota

• Tom Steyer of California

• Andrew Yang of New York and

• Bernie Sanders of Vermont (who won the 2016 New Hampshire Democratic primary with 60% of the vote).

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

“Unlike some of the folks up here, I don’t have 40 billionaires – Pete – contributing to my campaign,” Sanders said in reference to Buttigieg. “What we do have is we have now over 6 million contributions from 1.5 million people.”

Buttigieg responded that he was the only person on “stage who is not a millionaire of a billionaire.”

“We need a politics that is defined not by who we reject, but how we bring everybody into the fold,” Buttigieg added.

MEDICARE FOR ALL VERSUS OBAMACARE EXPANSION

Biden and Sanders continued their long-running argument about Medicare for All, favored by Sanders and Warren, or a public option expansion of Obamacare, preferred by Biden, Buttigieg and Klobuchar.

“Who’s going to pay for it? It will cost more than the entire, the entire, federal budget we spend now. More than the entire budget,” Biden said of Sanders’ plan. “The idea that middle-class taxes aren’t going to go up is just crazy.”

Sanders then said Biden’s plan would cost “$50 trillion” over the next decade.

“We are spending twice as per capita on health care as do the people of any other country. Maybe, it has something to do with the fact that last year, the health care industry made $100 billion in profit,” Sanders asserted.

Biden said he will pay for his $750 billion public option expansion of Obamacare by raising taxes on capital gains, which are currently taxed at about half the rate of income. Sanders acknowledges there will be tax increases to pay for his single-payer health care plan.

Warren said that last year, “36 million Americans couldn’t afford to have a prescription filled.”

“They were worried enough or sick enough that they went to a doctor, a doctor looked at it and said that’s serious enough to write a prescription,” Warren said. “They walked out and then said, ‘It’s either that or groceries. It’s either that or pay the rent on time.”

“POLITICS OF THE PAST”

Buttigieg, 38, would not only be the nation’s first openly gay president, but also its youngest. Biden, 77, would be the oldest.

“I freely admit that if you’re looking for the person with the most years of Washington establishment experience under their belt, you’ve got your candidate, and of course, it’s not me,” Buttigieg said in a thinly-veiled reference to Biden, who was elected to the U.S. Senate in 1972, a full 10 years before Buttigieg was even born.

“We need a perspective right now that will finally allow us to leave the politics of the past in the past, turn the page, and bring change to Washington before it’s too late,” Buttigieg added.

Biden took exception to this, relying on his eight years as President Barack Obama’s vice president.

“The politics of the past, I think, were not all that bad,” Biden responded. “I don’t know what about the past of Barack Obama and Joe Biden was so bad. What happened? What is it that he wants to do away with?

LABELS

Biden said President Donald Trump would make quick work of Sanders and Buttigieg during a general election debate.

“Bernie’s labeled himself, not me, a democratic socialist. I think that’s the label that the president’s going to lay on everyone running with Bernie if he’s the nominee,” Biden said.

Of Buttigieg, Biden said he is “a great guy and a real patriot. He’s a mayor of small city who has done some good things, but has not demonstrated he has the ability, and we’ll soon find out, to get a broad scope of support across the support, including African-Americans and Latinos.”

Sanders said candidates should not worry about Trump’s name-calling and instead focus on large voter turnout. Buttigieg said he is not interested in labels.

When asked about cooperating with Republicans on legislation, Klobuchar said she can accomplish this.

“We are not going to be able to out-divide the divider-in-chief,” she said in reference to Trump. “Donald Trump’s worst nightmare is a candidate that will bring in people from the middle, the people that are tired of the noise and the nonsense.”

Polls for New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary will be open during these hours by municipality on Tuesday:

• Nashua – 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Amherst – 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Bedford – 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

• Brookline – 7 a.m to 7:30 p.m.

• Hollis – 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

• Hudson – 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Litchfield – 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

• Lyndeborough – 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

• Merrimack – 7 a.m to 7 p.m.

• Milford – 6 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Pelham – 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

• Wilton – 8 a.m. to 7 p.m.

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