Bernie Sanders joins 2020 race, to defeat ‘racist’ Donald Trump
Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont who tends to caucus with Democrats. He lost the 2016 primaries to Hillary Clinton, who, in turn, lost to Donald Trump, a Republican, in a stunning upset.
Bernie Sanders announced Tuesday he was taking another shot at the Democratic presidential nomination, entering a crowded field of hopefuls most of whom are running on issues that he had first championed in his unsuccessful 2016 run, such as Medicare for all, free public college education and $15 minimum wage.
“We’re gonna win”, Sanders said in a response to a question, during an announcement interview on CBS news, to a question about what will be different this time.
Sanders is an independent senator from Vermont who tends to caucus with Democrats. He lost the 2016 primaries to Hillary Clinton, who, in turn, lost to Donald Trump, a Republican, in a stunning upset.
“It is absolutely imperative that Donald Trump be defeated, because I think it is unacceptable and un-American, to be frank with you, that we have a president who is a pathological liar,” Sanders said in the interview..
“We have a president who is a racist, who is a sexist, who is a xenophobe, who is doing what no president in our lifetimes has come close to do doing, and that is trying to divide us up.”
The 77-year-old senator enters the 2020 race as a leading contender for the nomination, figuring in the top-five in every poll, and mostly in the No 2 slot behind former Vice-President Joe Biden, who is said to be considering a run.
The field so far has made headlines for diversity. Four women — Senators Kamala Harris, Elizabeth Warren, Amy Klobuchar, Kirsten Gillibrand and Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard; one African American Senator Cory Booker; one Hispanic, Julian Castro. Waiting in the wings is Beto O’Rourke, a former congressman and a rising star in the Democratic party who has not announced yet, but is routinely finishing in the top-five in polls.
Sanders had conceded the 2016 primaries to Clinton after a contentious and closely contested fight going right up to the party convention in Philadelphia.
By the time he was done, his key issues — Medicare (single-payer government-run healthcare, such as in Canada and the United Kingdom) for all, free education at public colleges and universities and raising minimum wage to $15 — had moved center-stage from being viewed as too far to the left. They have been embraced by most of the 2020 hopefuls and are now described as key qualifying issues.
In the eyes of Republicans, they remain socialist issues, then, and for tactical reasons, now. The Trump campaign said in a statement to Sander’s entry, “Bernie Sanders has already won the debate in the Democrat primary, because every candidate is embracing his brand of socialism.”
“But the American people will reject an agenda of sky-high tax rates, government-run health care and coddling dictators like those in Venezuela. Only President Trump will keep America free, prosperous and safe.”