Sanders Campaign Press Release - Clintons, Wall Street Getting Nervous as Sanders Gains in Iowa

CLINTON, Iowa – Bernie Sanders told 700 supporters packed inside a community center here that Wall Street and Hillary Clinton's campaign are getting nervous about his growing momentum in Iowa and New Hampshire.

Speaking in the same city where Clinton addressed a smaller crowd earlier in the day, Sanders rebuffed attacks which he said were recycled from her failed 2008 Iowa caucus contest with then Sen. Barack Obama. "It reminds me of what happened here in Iowa eight years ago," Sanders said of the doubts she tried to plant about Obama's and now his experience and electability. "But you know what, people in Iowa saw through those attacks then and they're going to see though those attacks again."

In fact, polls show Sanders is far more electable. In general election matchups with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, Sanders substantially outpolls Clinton. An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll in mid-January, for example, found that in Iowa, a battleground state, Sanders was 13 points over Trump, 51 percent to 38 percent. Clinton's margin over Trump was only eight points.

Sanders also spoke here and earlier Saturday in Davenport, Iowa, about Wall Street jitters about his growing success.

"It appears that we have Wall Street a little bit nervous and that is a good thing," Sanders told volunteers at a field office in Davenport, Iowa, as they prepared for a day of door-knocking to bring people out to the Feb. 1 precinct caucuses.

He was referring to a Wall Street Journal interview, at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, with Stephen Schwarzman, the head of the Blackstone Group, a global private equity firm. Schwarzman blamed Sanders for rattling stock markets because of his growing support coupled with a sense that "we have Republicans on the other hand who don't inspire enormous confidence in terms of their ability perhaps to handle that job."

Sanders has made Wall Street reform a major issue in the contest for the Democratic Party presidential nomination. In a speech in New York City earlier this month, Sanders said Wall Street's business model is "fraud" and questioned whether Clinton's plan to regulate the financial industry would work. He also spoke about "very generous speaking fees" Clinton accepted from financial institutions, a reference to more than $3 million she took in 2013 alone from Goldman Sachs and other big banks.