Hillary Clinton dominates first Democratic prez debate

Hillary Clinton has strongly defended her front-runner status in the US presidential race as she took to the the podium along with four other rivals for the first Democratic presidential debate which was focussed on issues like gun control laws and foreign policy.

Clinton forcefully went after her main rival Bernie Sanders. The three other Democratic party candidates on the podium were Martin O'Malley, Jim Webb and Lincoln Chafee.

Eyeing to become the first woman president of the US, 67-year-old Clinton said her mission as president will be to raise incomes for hard-working middle-class families and to make sure that they get back to the basic bargain she was raised with: If you work hard and you do your part, you should be able to get ahead and stay ahead.

Clinton and Sanders, who has emerged as her toughest competition, have circled each other cautiously and avoided personal attacks. Sanders came to Clinton's defence over the email controversy that has often buffeted her campaign.

"This is a great country, but we have many, many serious problems. We should not be the country that has the highest rate of childhood poverty of any major country and more wealth and income inequality than any other country," Sanders said in his concluding remarks.

Clinton produced a more convincing rationale for why she should be President than she has done so far, dismissing the idea she was motivated mainly by restoring the Clinton political machine. She argued she has the vision and experience to enforce change.

She described herself as progressive. Sanders on the other hand called himself as a Democratic socialist.

"What democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent -- almost -- own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 per cent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent," he argued.

While Sanders argued the case for a free college education for everybody, Clinton said her plans included to make sure that kids don't have to come out of college with debts on their head. "But they need to work 10 hours a week," she noted.

Sanders disapproved of it, saying that he would fund his free college education plan by taxing the rich.

On foreign policy, Sanders said he would everything to ensure that the US does not get involved in another quagmire like it did in Iraq, the worst foreign policy blunder in the history of this country.

Clinton, of course reflected on her four years' experience of being one of the most successful Secretary of State.

"We don't want American troops on the ground in Syria. I never said that. What I said was we had to put together a coalition -- in fact, something that I worked on before I left the State Department -- to do, and yes, that it should include Arabs, people in the region," she said.