In New Hampshire, Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders pitch young voters on college plan
As Hillary Clinton’s campaign makes a push to turn out younger voters, New Hampshire is getting a heavy dose of her progressive surrogates.
Bernie Sanders campaigned Wednesday with Clinton at the University of New Hampshire in Durham, five days after Elizabeth Warren made a solo swing through the state. The former primary rivals were appearing on stage together for the first time since July, when Sanders officially endorsed Clinton a short drive away in Portsmouth.
In need of persuading younger voters—who haven’t coalesced around Clinton in the way they did for President Barack Obama—to turn out in November, the Clinton-Sanders pitch relied heavily on the Democratic nominee’s college plan.
“And make no mistake about it; this is a revolutionary proposal for the future our country,” Sanders told the crowd, speaking first, with Clinton sitting and smiling behind him.
The Vermont senator lauded Clinton’s plan to make college tuition-free for families making $125,000 or less annually, an embrace of one of his primary campaign’s major tenets.
Sanders said the plan would guarantee that no student leaves school with “outrageous levels” of student loan debt, and that it would also make college accessible for low-income families.
In a battleground state “emblematic” of Clinton’s “millennial math problem,” as Bloomberg puts it, Sanders is perhaps as forceful a surrogate the Democratic nominee could have.
The senator—who is popular both among millennials and in the Granite State—called electing Clinton “imperative,” while trashing Republican opponent Donald Trump’s policies as “absurd and disgraceful.”
When Clinton took the stage, she thanked Sanders for his campaign and doubled down on the pitch to college students.
“You know, Bernie’s campaign energized so many young people, some of you in this crowd,” she said. “And there is no group of Americans that have more at stake in this election than young Americans.”
In an election with two deeply unpopular major-party nominees, Clinton made appeal to voters’ ideas.
“It’s not just my name on the ballot,” she said. “Every issue you care about, think about it, because in effect, it’s on the ballot, too.”
Clinton said college affordability was one of the biggest issues she heard about on the campaign trail and plugged additional aspects of her college plan: student-loan refinancing, a three month moratorium on paying student debt, and loan forgiveness for public or national service.
(At one point during the rally, Sanders sat somewhat uncomfortably as Clinton touted the support she received from local Republicans, as well as an endorsement from a former GOP senator from Virginia.)
Speaking to the student-heavy crowd, her pitch also came with a warning.
“None of this will happen if you all don’t turn out to vote,” she said.
In New Hampshire—a state with the most expensive public university system for in-state students and the second-highest rate of student debt—there may not be a better audience for that line of appeal.
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