After two days of intense Democratic infighting, Bernie Sanders apologized for his staff's snooping into Hillary Clinton's campaign files at the opening of a cantankerous presidential debate Saturday that underscored sharp differences among the candidates on foreign policy, combating terrorism and raising taxes. 
 
 The testy exchanges during the debate in the first primary state of New Hampshire marked an antagonistic new chapter in what had been, to this point, a fairly agreeable contest. But from the beginning it was colored with tension from the controversy over the Sanders campaign's unauthorized access to proprietary Clinton files on a joint voter database maintained by the Democratic National Committee. 
 
 The breach led the DNC to cut off Sanders' access to the database Friday, prompting the independent senator from Vermont to take the issue to court. His access was restored just hours before the debate. 
 
 Asked during the debate whether he would apologize to Clinton, Sanders replied: “Yes, I apologize.” 
 
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 Clinton, in response, said that her campaign was “distressed” by the entree into her files but that she appreciated his apology and wanted to “go forward” to discuss more substantive policy topics. 
 
 The conciliatory comments gave former Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley his first opportunity of the night to blister both candidates as ignoring “pressing issues” facing the country. “Maybe that is normal politics in Washington, but that is not the politics of higher purpose that people expect from our party,” he said. 
 
 The aggressive tenor reflected a race that is careening swiftly toward the votes that will determine the next Democratic nominee. It was the last organized gathering of the three candidates this year; January will bring not only more debates but a ratcheted-up retail campaign presence in this and other early states. 
 
 O'Malley was aggressive throughout, castigating the other two candidates as representing “socialism” — Sanders — and “crony capitalism” — Clinton. He casting himself as the better and more youthful alternative. (He is 52, Clinton 68 and Sanders 74.) 
 
 “Can I offer a different generation's perspective on this? I would suggest to you that we need to leave the Cold War behind us,” he said during one foreign policy exchange, which drew boos from the audience. 
 
 He also took after both competitors on the subject of guns. He criticized Sanders for his previous support of gun legislation backed by the National Rifle Assn., and attacked Clinton for, as he put it, changing her view on guns with each election year. 
 
 “What we need on this issue is not more polls. We need more principle,” he said, blaming access to assault weapons in the U.S. on “the flip-flopping, political approach of Washington that both of my two colleagues on this stage have represented there for the last 40 years.” 
 
 “Whoa, whoa,” Sanders pleaded. “Let's calm down a little bit, Martin.” 
 
 Clinton implored O'Malley to “tell the truth.” “I applaud his record in Maryland. I just wish he wouldn't misrepresent mine,” she added. 
 
 Clinton and Sanders occasionally worked together to try to bat down O'Malley's criticisms, particularly after his remarks on guns. But the pair also disagreed fiercely on multiple matters, including Syria, healthcare and taxes. 
 
 Three times, Sanders raised Clinton's vote for war in Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks — the vote that helped vault Barack Obama over Clinton during her first run for the presidency in 2008. 
 
 “We disagreed on the war on Iraq. I voted against the war,” Sanders said. “I worry too much that Secretary Clinton is too much into regime change and a little bit too aggressive without knowing what the unintended consequences might be.” 
 
 Sanders argued that American attention should focus on combating the Islamic State terrorists operating in the Mideast and, as the Paris and San Bernardino terrorist shootings showed, extending their influence across the world. Clinton argued that that approach needed to be accompanied by an international effort to push aside Syrian President Bashar Assad. 
 
 “With all due respect, Senator, you voted for regime change with respect to Libya,” she said. “If we had not joined our European partners and our Arab partners to assist the people in Libya, you would be looking at Syria” in Libya too, she added, referring to the deaths of more than 200,000 people and the refugee crisis enveloping much of Europe. 
 
 Clinton later downplayed the continued unrest in Libya, saying, “I'm not giving up on Libya.” 
 
 Although nationally televised, the debate's most important audience may well have been in the state where it occurred, New Hampshire, which looms as a must-win for Sanders, since he is from next-door Vermont. 
 
 He has a narrow lead in New Hampshire, which holds the first-in-the-nation primary on Feb. 9, but he has not been able to make a dent in Clinton's commanding national lead. (O'Malley has been mired in the low single digits throughout, far behind the top two.) 
 
 Sanders and Clinton also clashed on the taxes that she said would be required to fund the social programs that he seeks to create, including universal healthcare and free college for all. Clinton, who has pledged she would not raise taxes on families earning less than $250,000, said Sanders' promises were unrealistic. 
 
 “You are going to have to get more taxes out of the middle class” to fund the Sanders agenda, she said. “I don't think we should be imposing new big programs that are going to be raising middle-class families' taxes.” 
 
 Sanders disagreed. 
 
 “Secretary Clinton is wrong,” he said, and added that her objections were akin to those who opposed revered Democratic programs like Social Security and Medicare. And he noted that many of Clinton's allies in Congress were pushing a landmark paid family leave plan, which would cost middle-class families $1.61 per week — a measure not supported by Clinton, who is promoting a plan that would be funded by other means. 
 
 “Secretary Clinton, a buck sixty-one is a pretty good investment,” Sanders said. 
 
 Despite the engaged performances by the trailing candidates, there was little to suggest the exchanges would reshape the race. 
 
 A sweeping victory by Sanders was negated when he had to open the debate with an apology for his campaign's actions in accessing Clinton's campaign files. While the dispute may have been a bit too “insider” for many voters, it undercut somewhat Sanders' positioning as the principled alternative to the front-runner. Clinton's campaign, which called the action a “theft,” worked to make that point over the last two days. ||||| Clinton looks past debate to attack GOP The Democratic front-runner tries to present herself as the inevitable pick. 
 
 Hillary Clinton on Saturday night looked past the debate stage upon which she stood, turning the evening into a Democrat-vs.-Republican battle rather than focusing on the two remaining contenders badly trailing her in national polls. 
 
 "I'm very clear that we have a distinct difference between those of us on this stage tonight and all of our Republican counterparts," Clinton said, just one of many references to her Republican rivals throughout the night. "From my perspective, we have to prevent the Republicans from rolling back the progress that we've made," she said, ticking off GOP desires to repeal Obamacare, cut taxes for the wealthy and continue allowing people on the no-fly list to buy guns. 
 
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 The night also brought a de-escalation in the blowup involving Bernie Sanders' campaign's viewing and downloading her voter data information, with the Vermont senator apologizing, despite indications that his campaign wanted to keep up the fight over the issue. 
 
 “Yes, I apologize,” Sanders said to Clinton, when asked whether the former secretary of state deserved an apology. He continued, “I want to apologize to my supporters. This is not the type of campaign that we run. And if I find anybody else involved with this, they will be fired." 
 
 Clinton accepted the apology, herself lowering the temperature after her campaign had emphatically cried foul on Friday, saying at the debate Saturday night that Americans are not interested in the fracas. “I very much appreciate that comment, Bernie. It really is important that we go forward on this," Clinton said. 
 
 But the more lasting theme of the evening was Clinton's attempt to position herself as the inevitable Democratic pick, despite the fact that Sanders is still edging her in New Hampshire, the setting of Saturday's showdown. 
 
 “The difference between us and the Republicans is night and day,” Clinton said, laughing frequently while responding to barbs from both Sanders and long-shot Martin O’Malley at ABC News’ third Democratic debate. "I think it's great standing up here with the senator and the governor talking about these issues because you're not going to hear anything like this from any of the Republicans who are running for president." 
 
 That didn’t mean Sanders and O’Malley let Clinton make the contrast without challenging her — both the Vermont senator and former Maryland governor called her out for her connections to Wall Street and made the case that her record at the State Department inadvertently helped lay the groundwork for the rise of ISIL, also known as ISIS. 
 
 But Clinton didn’t let the criticisms slow her attempt to paint herself as presidential, not just the best Democratic candidate. When asked whether corporate America would love a President Hillary Clinton, her ready answer was, “Everybody should," which drew laughs from the crowd and defused another attack on her Wall Street donor base. 
 
 Some of the most notable tangling among the candidates involved gun control — an issue that has divided the field as each contender has pledged to put up the toughest fight against the gun lobby. 
 
 Clinton, who has repeatedly hit Sanders for his mixed record on gun control measures, pivoted a discussion about fighting radicalization and terrorism to gun control. “You have to look at both the terrorism challenge that we face abroad and certainly at home, and the role that guns play in delivering the violence that stalks us,” she said. 
 
 The Vermont senator sought to defend his past votes by pointing to the existing gun culture of his home state, while insisting that he currently stands with most Democrats on the issue. “We’ve got to eliminate the gun show loophole, in my view; we have got to see that weapons designed by the military to kill people are not in the hands of civilians,” he said, while O’Malley sought to get a word in. 
 
 “Secretary Clinton changes her position on this every election year,” said O’Malley, who backed her in 2008, as Clinton paid Sanders a backhanded compliment for his move closer to her own position on the issue. 
 
 The candidates provided a unified front, however, when it came to one man: Donald Trump. 
 
 “Mr. Trump has a great capacity to use bluster and bigotry to inflame people and to make them think there are easy answers to very complex questions,” said Clinton, in response to a question about how she would address those who currently back the New York real estate magnate and Republican poll leader. 
 
 She later blasted Trump — who O’Malley earlier called a “billionaire with [a] big mouth” — for his proposal to temporarily ban Muslims from entering the United States, calling it ill-advised to insult the people who the U.S. will need to work with to defeat ISIS. 
 
 Calling this a “very dangerous moment in American history," thanks to both terrorism and income inequality, Sanders also went after the billionaire businessman. "And somebody like a Trump comes along and says, 'I know the answers, the answer is that all of the Mexicans, they're criminals and rapists. We gotta hate the Mexicans. Those are your enemies. We hate all of the Muslims because all of the Muslims are terrorists. We gotta hate the Muslims,’” Sanders added. "Meanwhile the rich get richer," he said, also noting that Trump supports a low minimum wage. 
 
 The broadsides against Trump — and Clinton’s attempts to elevate herself — came after the two leading candidates agreed to move past the data breach that rocked the race on Friday. 
 
 The Vermont senator's apology for his campaign’s viewing and downloading of her voter data information was a public easing of the war that gripped the Democratic Party for the previous 48 hours. The kind words came after a nasty hurling of accusations among the Sanders campaign, the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee, which had temporarily suspended Sanders’ access to the voter file database, a move that threatened to cripple the Sanders' field operation. 
 
 While Sanders' campaign admitted inappropriate behavior on the part of members of its staff — who took advantage of a technology glitch — and fired its national data director, it accused the DNC of trying to “sabotage” the senator's presidential run and of blatantly favoring Clinton. 
 
 The Sanders campaign regained access to the national voter file after it filed suit in federal court on Friday — a massive escalation that added a dose of chaos to the race. 
 
 Pivoting from its defensive position to an attempt to gain politically, Sanders’ campaign sought to paint the day as a perfect encapsulation of Clinton’s alleged ownership of the Democratic establishment. Raising campaign cash off the saga, Sanders’ team brought in over $1 million on Friday alone. 
 
 Authors:
– The first question at the Democratic debate Saturday night resulted in a rarity: a direct apology from one candidate to another. In this case, it was delivered by Bernie Sanders to Hillary Clinton in succinct fashion. Asked whether she was owed an apology because one of his staffers improperly breached her campaign's voter data, he replied, "Yes, I apologize." The quick response drew applause, and he then expanded the apology to all his supporters. "This is not the type of campaign that we run," he said, per the New York Times. The staffer in question has been fired, he said, and others will be, too, if an investigation turns up further wrongdoing. Clinton said she appreciated Sanders' statement, and both, along with Martin O'Malley, seemed eager to move on from the controversy, reports Politico.