Jamie Howell
   Staff Writer

This past Saturday, Oct. 14, the second Democratic primary debate took place in Iowa.

The three candidates in the debate were former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Martin O’Malley, the former governor of Maryland.

The debate kicked off with a discussion on foreign policy and how each candidate plans to deal with the notorious jihadi fighters, commonly referred to as ISIS, which became a top issue after the recent terrorist attacks in Paris.

Clinton said that diplomacy and cooperation with other countries is the way to fight ISIL and that a military response should always be the last resort. She said that American support is necessary to defeat ISIS.

“This cannot be an American fight, although American leadership is essential,” Clinton said.

O’Malley disagreed with Clinton, arguing that America does have a role in the fight against ISIL.

“Our role in the world is to confront evil when it rises,” O’Malley said.

He also noted that he would have the U.S. cooperating with other nations to do this.

Sanders stuck to climate change as being the U.S.’s biggest security threat but said that ISIS is an important issue, which must be immediately addressed. He disagreed with Clinton’s belief that “this cannot be an American fight.”

“The invasion of Iraq led to the massive level of instability we are seeing right now,” Sanders said.

Because of this, he says that the issue ISIS presents is an American fight, but Muslim countries need to lead the effort.

None of the candidates dove deeply into the specifics of how they would deal with racial issues, but they all agreed that there needs to be major reform.

Clinton told stories about the tragedies faced by people who have lost their children, Sanders gave a list of disheartening statistics, and Martin O’Malley said, “Black lives matter.”

Sanders did say that he wants to reform “a broken criminal justice system” and hold police accountable as well as make marijuana legal on the federal level.

Each of the candidates has his or her own plan for building up the middle class, and they all involve either completely free or at least debt-free college.

Sanders would like to see that public higher education be completely free. This is along with his plans to raise Social Security benefits and spend $1 trillion on infrastructure.

He says that free college would “give hope to millions of young people.”

Sanders also said he wants to get rid of private insurance companies and introduce Medicare for all in the form of a single-payer system.

According to his campaign, he would do this by taxing Wall Street and the richest citizens. When asked about how high the tax would be, he said that he didn’t have an exact number yet but that the tax won’t be 90 percent.

“I’m not that much of a socialist compared to Eisenhower,” Sanders said.

Clinton said she has a plan to make public college debt free, community college free, put a $250 cap on prescription drug costs and implement mandatory paid family leave.

She said that she doesn’t want to scrap the Affordable Healthcare Act but that she wants to improve it, and she added that she doesn’t want the states administering healthcare.

Clinton defended her idea of debt free instead of all out free college.

“I don’t think taxpayers should be paying to send Donald Trump’s kids to college,” Clinton said.

Clinton explicitly said that the money to pay for this would not come from the middle class but instead from higher taxes on the wealthy as well as closing carpet loopholes and deductions.

O’Malley also wants to create debt-free college, but he used his experience in Maryland to show that he had accomplished things like this before by raising the sales tax in his state and raising taxes for the top 14 percent.

Senator Sanders said he plans to raise the federal minimum wage to $15 an hour.

“It is not a radical idea,” Sanders said.

He says that the middle class helps build the economy when they have some disposable income.

O’Malley and Clinton said they would also like to see the federal minimum wage raised, but they both said they would go with something closer to $12, giving states the freedom to raise it higher if they wish.

The talk about Wall Street began with Clinton saying that she wants to look beyond just the big banks and that she wants to look at “the whole problem” including shadow banking.

Sanders held that Clinton’s plan for Wall Street is “not good enough.” He said that he wants to reinstate the Glass-Steagall act and break up all of the big banks.

Sanders then said that Clinton was beholden to Wall Street and that they “expect to get something” for the money they give to her campaign.

Clinton gave an impassioned response, saying that Sanders was questioning her integrity, and she brought the events of 9/11 into the equation.

“Where were we attacked, we were attacked in downtown Manhattan where Wall Street is,” Clinton said. “I did spend a whole lot of time helping them rebuild. It was good for New York; it was good for the economy.”

Clinton also said that reinstating Glass-Steagall was not enough and that she wants to focus on all of Wall Street.

O’Malley called Clinton’s proposal “weak tea” and  said that he also wants to reinstate a modernized version of Glass-Steagall.