Clinton and Sanders Fight Moves to New York; Interview with Clay Aiken
HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Do some people need to get off?</s>VAUSE: Now that's something you don't see every day. Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton riding the New York subway. She took it for one entire stop. And she was more than a dozen reporters, surrounded by Secret Service as well. Like many New Yorkers, though, it took Secretary Clinton multiple swipes at the turnstile before her metro card granted her access to the train. Clinton and her Democratic challenger, Bernie Sanders, are looking for big wins in this New York's upcoming primary, and as CNN's Jeff Zeleny reports, the attacks and the tension are escalating.</s>CLINTON: I will take Bernie Sanders over Donald Trump or Ted Cruz anytime.</s>JEFF ZELENY, CNN SENIOR WASHINGTON CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Hillary Clinton taking the high road today, for a moment at least, as the Democratic race devolves into a war of words.</s>CLINTON: Let's keep our eye on what's really at stake in this election.</s>ZELENY: At stake is the New York primary, which Bernie Sanders is fighting hard to win, firing off some of the most personal attacks yet of the campaign over who's qualified to be president.</s>SEN. BERNIE SANDERS (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: The American people might wonder about your qualifications, Madam Secretary, when you voted for the war in Iraq, the most disastrous foreign policy blunder in the modern history of America.</s>ZELENY: In Philadelphia today, Sanders unleashed a laundry list of grievances.</s>SANDERS: Are you qualified to be president of the United States when you're raising millions of dollars from Wall Street, an entity whose greed, recklessness and illegal behavior helped destroy our economy?</s>ZELENY: Sanders said Clinton started it by diminishing his qualifications. She said he did. It's a rough and tumble New York primary, raising questions about unifying the Democratic Party.</s>CLINTON: I ran a very contested campaign against then Senator Obama and it went all the way to the end. We worked really hard. He got more delegates. And so I endorsed him.</s>ZELENY: This map on the wall at Clinton campaign headquarters in Brooklyn is a daily reminder of their lead in delegates. Sanders is vowing to take the fight to the convention. A move that doesn't sit well with Clinton campaign manager, Robby Mook.</s>ROBBY MOOK, HILLARY CLINTON CAMPAIGN MANAGER: The stakes are so high. Nobody wants -- nobody in our party wants to see Donald Trump or Ted Cruz become president. And I think people will very quickly unify behind our nominee.</s>ZELENY (on camera): But it is different. I mean, she was a Democrat her entire life and if he's not been a Democrat, what incentive does he have to help unify this party?</s>MOOK: Well, that's up to Senator Sanders. He's going to have to make a decision about the role that he wants to play.</s>ZELENY: Would it be a mistake for the party to keep litigating this into July into Philadelphia?</s>MOOK: Well, I think to the point that it's obvious that a candidate has a majority of delegates and will win the nomination at the convention, I do think it will be time to come together. But we're not there yet.</s>ZELENY: Not there yet. And a long way to go. 12 days remaining before the New York primary. How this race plays out between Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, if they keep escalating their war, it will make it more difficult to unify the party. That's what some Democrats are concerned about. Jeff Zeleny, CNN, New York.</s>VAUSE: Singer-songwriter Clay Aiken ran for a U.S. congressional seat in North Carolina in 2014. These days he's actively supporting Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign. He joins us now here in Los Angeles. Clay, thank you for coming in. It's nice to have you here in Los Angeles. Last month you declared your support for Bernie Sanders. You wrote this Op-Ed for the "Huffington Post." You said you liked Hillary Clinton, you expected that she would actually end up getting the party nomination and then you went on to write, "I think she's more qualified than anyone who has run for president in decades, and I agree with her on most issues. I just wish she could embrace some of the more progressive ideals that Senator Sanders talks so enthusiastically about. She needs to be better. She needs to learn from the Bern." What I took away from that is that seems very, very different from what a lot of Bernie Sanders supporters because from them there seems to be a lot of real anger directed towards Secretary Clinton. Why is that?</s>CLAY AIKEN, FORMER U.S. CONGRESSIONAL CANDIDATE: Well, listen, I'm a Democrat first.</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>AIKEN: And I think that the Democratic nominee, whether it's Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton, is who I want to see in the White House in January of next year. I think a lot of people who support Bernie Sanders, and I'm one of them to some degree, appreciate the fact that he's not a normal politician, that he is more willing to do things and say things that normal politicians will not do. He didn't take advantage of the Hillary Clinton e-mail scandal.</s>VAUSE: The e-mail scandal. Exactly.</s>AIKEN: Which a lot of typical, seasoned politicians would do, but it's a very honest move on his part. And I think a lot of people who support him appreciate that about him. When Hillary Clinton has, over the course of this campaign, up until now, used somewhat typical political attacks at Bernie Sanders, saying he's running one of the most negative campaigns in the history.</s>VAUSE: Right.</s>AIKEN: I mean, I don't know where she was in 2008, but that was pretty nasty.</s>VAUSE: Sure.</s>AIKEN: You know, certainly saying that he wanted to get rid of people's healthcare, get rid of their Obamacare. I think that probably upsets a lot of people who are Bernie Sanders supporters.</s>VAUSE: Sure. OK. Does it worry you that the race on this Democrat side, which has been pretty tame up until now, has really escalated in, I guess, the nastiness, if you like, with the attacks as happened really, really quickly, could this actually hurt the party in the long run when it comes to November?</s>AIKEN: I mean, do I think it will hurt the party in the long run?</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>AIKEN: Probably not, when you look in comparison at what's happening on the Republican side.</s>VAUSE: Sure.</s>AIKEN: Absolutely we still look quite tame compared to that circus. That said, you know, I'm a Bernie Sanders supporter who's also perfectly willing to be objective and say I don't think that it was necessarily the most responsibly move to, A, say that Hillary Clinton is not qualified; she certainly is. I still believe the most qualified. I also don't think that it's necessarily responsible for the Sanders campaign at this point to start saying that it should be up to the super delegates to decide when a few months ago they didn't want super delegates to decide. So I still believe that Bernie Sanders should stay in the race as long as possible. I'd like to see him stay in the convention and get some concessions out of the platform committee.</s>VAUSE: Which seems to be the strategy here.</s>AIKEN: Yes, and I think it's very important to have his part of the discussion.</s>VAUSE: OK. It is getting feisty out there. Former President Bill Clinton, he was out campaigning for his wife. There was this heated exchange with a protester from the Black Lives Matter group. They're angry over a 1994 crime bill which he signed, and they say it put more non-violent offenders in prison for longer periods of time. Let's listen to some of that exchange.</s>BILL CLINTON, FORMER UNITED STATES PRESIDENT: I don't know how you would characterize the gang leaders who got 13-year-old kids hopped up on crack and sent them out on the street to murder other African- American children. Maybe you thought they were good citizens. She didn't. She didn't.</s>VAUSE: You know, we haven't seen Bill Clinton like that for a long time. But does something like this help Hillary Clinton or does it hurt Hillary Clinton?</s>AIKEN: I don't think it does necessarily, either.</s>VAUSE: Right.</s>AIKEN: I think that -- you know, I just came from the "Idol" finale tonight.</s>VAUSE: Right.</s>AIKEN: Came right over, watching that, being there, kind of remind you about the spirit of competition in a way, and the closer you get to success, to winning, the more almost desperate you become. For Bernie Sanders, he's gotten further than I think maybe even he expected. For Hillary Clinton, she's finding herself in a race that's a lot closer than she ever planned. And so we're seeing her get frustrated, certainly Bill Clinton is starting to get frustrated, at how much of a fight Senator Sanders and his supporters are putting up.</s>VAUSE: Yes.</s>AIKEN: You know, he had some protesters at that rally, and he probably got very frustrated that here we are in the mid to late April and we're finding that Hillary Clinton hasn't wrapped up the nomination.</s>VAUSE: I mean, this is the point, isn't it? Because at this point in the campaign, by April, the Clinton campaign thought that they would be resting, raising money, getting ready for the general election, but yet Sanders keeps hanging in there, even though his path to victory isn't a really difficult one.</s>AIKEN: And I think that's something that's very important for Secretary Clinton to continue to address, is the fact that there is a faction and a part of the Democratic Party that wants these progressive ideals embraced, that wants her to continue to move to the left on things like trade, like she's done after -- in the wake of Michigan. She did that to change her stance going into Ohio. I think she needs to continue to embrace that. I think attacking Bernie Sanders at this point is probably not responsible because she's going to have to get those folks to vote for them in November.</s>VAUSE: Yes. We need a Kumbaya come November.</s>AIKEN: Yes.</s>VAUSE: Clay Aiken, thank you so much for coming in.</s>AIKEN: Thank you.</s>VAUSE: And before Clay went into politics, he had a very different claim to fame, "American Idol" season two runner up and now millions of fans are saying goodbye to the talent show that changed TV. Also ahead. Police taking on a high-speed car chase right here in Los Angeles and the driver really put on a show.