Bernie Sanders eyes 2nd prez bid 2020
Washington, Feb. 19: Senator Bernie Sanders on Tuesday launched his second bid for the White House, taking direct aim at Donald Trump in an announcement that calls the US President a “pathological liar.”
Mr Sanders, 77, joins an already crowded field of candidates seeking to win the Democratic nomination and take on President Donald Trump in 2020.
He made the announcement
in a radio interview with a station from his home state of Vermont.
“I wanted to let the people of the state of Vermont know about this first,” Mr Sanders said on Vermont Public Radio. The selfdescribed Democratic socialist gave an outline Tuesday of how he will campaign.
“What I promise to do is, as I go around the country, is to take the values that all of us in Vermont are proud of — a belief in justice, in community, in grassroots politics, in town meetings — that’s what I’m going to carry all over this country,” he said.
In a video announcing his candidacy, Mr Sanders called Mr Trump pathological liar and a racist. “We are living in a pivotal and dangerous moment in American history. We are running against a president who is a pathological liar, a fraud, a racist, a sexist, a xenophobe and someone who is undermining American democracy,” Mr Sanders said.
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Washington, Feb. 19: As Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, whose insurgent 2016 presidential campaign reshaped Democratic politics, announced Tuesday that he is running for president in 2020.
“Our campaign is not only about defeating Donald Trump,” the 77year- old self- described democratic socialist said in an email to supporters. “Our campaign is about transforming our country and creating a government based on the principles of economic, social, racial and environmental justice.”
An enthusiastic progressive who embraces proposals ranging from Medicare for All to free college tuition, Sanders stunned the Democratic establishment in 2016 with his spirited challenge to Hillary Clinton. While she ultimately became the party's nominee, his campaign helped lay the groundwork for the leftward lurch that has dominated Democratic politics in the Trump era.
The question now for Sanders is whether he can stand out in a crowded field of Democratic presidential candidates who also embrace many of his policy ideas and are newer to the national political stage. That's far different from 2016, when he was Clinton's lone progressive adversary.
Still, there is no question that Sanders will be a formidable contender for the Democratic nomination. He won more than 13 million votes in 2016 and dozens of primaries and caucuses. He opens his campaign with a nationwide organisation and a proven small- dollar fundraising effort.
“We're gonna win,” Sanders told CBS.
He said he was going to launch “what I think is unprecedented in modern American history”: a grassroots movement “to lay the groundwork for transforming the economic and political life of this country.”
Sanders described his new White House bid as a “continuation of what we did in 2016,” noting that policies he advocated for then are now embraced by the Democratic Party.
“You know what's happened in over three years?” he said. “All of these ideas and many more are now part of the political mainstream.”
Sanders could be well positioned to compete in the nation's first primary in neighboring New Hampshire, which he won by 22 points in 2016. But he won't have the state to himself.
Sen. Kamala Harris of California, another Democratic presidential contender, was in New Hampshire on Monday and said she'd compete for the state. She also appeared to take a dig at Sanders.
“The people of New Hampshire will tell me what's required to compete in New Hampshire,” she told shoppers at a bookstore in Concord. “But I will tell you I'm not a democratic socialist.”