Democratic presidential candidate lashes out at Clinton

Democratic White House candidate Bernie Sanders went on the offensive against front-runner Hillary Clinton on Sunday in the most contentious of their four presidential debates, accusing her of cozying up to Wall Street and misrepresenting his stance on healthcare and guns.

Reflecting Sanders' rise in opinion polls, the two battled with new urgency over who was best suited to lead Democrats in the November election. Sanders cast himself as the outsider who would lead a political revolution, while Clinton touted her experience and embraced President Barack Obama's legacy.

Sanders pushed back at every turn. He painted Clinton as a defender of the status quo who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars in speaking fees as a former secretary of state from Wall Street backers.

"I don't take money from big banks. I don’t get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs," the U.S. senator from Vermont said, adding, "I have huge doubts when people receive money from Wall Street."

He referred to his rising poll numbers in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, where he has pulled even or ahead of Clinton, saying he believed he could expand his number of supporters to include more African-American voters. He noted that when his presidential campaign began, Clinton was 50 percentage points ahead of him in the polls.

"Guess what: In Iowa, New Hampshire, the race is (now) very, very close," Sanders said.

The debate followed a week of rising tension between the two leading candidates. Sanders was noticeably more animated that in previous debates, sometimes grimacing and shaking his head during Clinton's answers.

Former Maryland Governor Martin O'Malley, who lags badly in polls, was often a bystander although he joined Sanders in criticizing Clinton's Wall Street ties.

Clinton said she would build on Obama's agenda, accusing Sanders of voting to deregulate the financial market in 2000 in a way that led to the central causes of the financial collapse of 2008 that pitched the U.S. economy into a deep recession.

Clinton tried to undercut Sanders' support among supporters of Obama, who remains a popular figure in the Democratic Party.