Bernie Sanders on democratic socialism
Well, first of all, let me be very clear. Anybody that does what Maduro does is a vicious tyrant. What we need now is international and regional cooperation for free elections in Venezuela so that the people of that country can create their own future.
In terms of democratic socialism — to equate what goes on in Venezuela with what I believe is extremely unfair. I’ll tell you what I believe in terms of democratic socialism. I agree with what goes on in Canada and Scandinavia, guaranteeing health care to all people as a human right. I believe that the United States should not be the only major country on Earth not to provide paid family and medical leave. I believe that every worker in this country deserves a living wage and that we expand the trade union movement.
I happen to believe also that what, to me, democratic socialism means, is we deal with an issue … we do not discuss enough, Jorge, not in the media, and not in Congress. You got three people in America owning more wealth than the bottom half of this country. You got a handful of billionaires controlling what goes on in Wall Street, the insurance companies, and in the media. Maybe, just maybe, what we should be doing is creating an economy that works for all of us, not 1 percent. That’s my understanding of democratic socialism.
Pete Buttigieg on coming out as a gay man
You know, as a military officer serving under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and as an elected official in the state of Indiana when Mike Pence was governor, at a certain point, when it came to professional setbacks, I had to wonder whether just acknowledging who I was was going to be the ultimate career-ending professional setback. I came back from the deployment and realized that you only get to live one life, and I was not interested in not knowing what it was like to be in love any longer, so I just came out.
I had no idea what kind of professional setback it would be, especially because inconveniently, it was an election year in my socially conservative community. What happened was that when I trusted voters to judge me based on the job that I did for them, they decided to trust me and reelected me with 80 percent of the vote. And what I learned was that trust can be reciprocated, and that part of how you can win and deserve to win is to know what’s worth more to you than winning. And I think that’s what we need in the presidency right now.
We have to know what we are about. And this election is not about any of us up here. It is not about this president, even though it’s hard to talk of anything else some days. It’s about the people who trust us with their lives. A kid wondering if we’re actually going to make their schools safe when they’ve learned active shooter drills before they’ve learned to read. A generation wondering if we will actually get the job done on climate change. And if we hold to that, then it doesn’t matter what happens to each of us professionally. Together, we will win a better era for our country.
Julian Castro differentiating Obama’s deportations from Trump’s anti-immigration
I agree that Barack Obama was very different from Donald Trump. Donald Trump has a dark heart when it comes to immigrants. He built his whole political career so far on scapegoating and fearmongering and otherizing migrants, and that’s very different from Barack Obama.
But my problem with Vice President Biden — and Cory [Booker] pointed this out last time — is every time something good about Barack Obama comes up, he says, oh, I was there, I was there, I was there, that’s me, too, and then every time somebody questions part of the administration that we were both part of, he says, well, that was the president. I mean, he wants to take credit for Obama’s work, but not have to answer to any questions.
I was the first candidate in early April to put forward an immigration plan. You know why? Because I’m not afraid of Donald Trump on this issue. I’m not going to back pedal. I’m not going to pretend like I don’t have my own vision for immigration.
So we’re not going to give up DACA. We’re not going to give up protections for anybody. I believe that on January 20, 2021, we’re going to have a Democratic president, we’re going to throw out Mitch McConnell and John Cornyn and have a Democratic Senate, and a Democratic House, and we’re going to pass immigration reform within the first 100 days.
Andrew Yang affirms strength in immigration with his family’s personal story
My father grew up on a peanut farm in Asia with no floor, and now his son is running for president. That is the immigration story that we have to be able to share with the American people.
If you look at our history, almost half of Fortune 500 companies were founded by either immigrants or children of immigrants, and rates of business formation are much higher in immigration communities. We have to say to the American people, immigrants are positive for our economic and social dynamism, and I would return the level of legal immigration to the point it was in the Obama-Biden administration.
I think we have to compete for talent, and I am the opposite of Donald Trump in many ways. He says, “Build a wall.” I’m going to say to immigrants, “Come to America, because if you come here, your son, your daughter can run for president. The water is great. And this is where you want to build a company, build a family, and build a life.” This country has been a magnet for human capital for generations. If we lose that, we lose something integral to our continued success, and that is where I would lead as president.
Amy Klobuchar against Medicare-for-all
First of all, Senator Sanders and I have worked valiantly to bring down the cost of pharmaceuticals. That was a Klobuchar-Sanders Amendment to allow for drugs to come in from less expensive countries like Canada.
We have worked to bring down the cost by fighting to allow 43 million seniors, that’s a bill I lead, to negotiate for better prices under Medicare. I figure that’s a lot of seniors and they should be allowed to get a better price.
But when it comes to our health care and when it comes to our premiums, I go with the doctor’s creed, which is, do no harm. And while Bernie wrote the bill, I read the bill. And on page eight — on page eight of the bill, it says that we will no longer have private insurance as we know it. And that means that 149 million Americans will no longer be able to have their current insurance.
That’s in four years. I don’t think that’s a bold idea, I think it’s a bad idea. And what I favor is something that what Barack Obama wanted to do from the very beginning. And that is a public option. A non-profit choice that would bring down the cost of insurance, cover 12 million more people, and bring down the prices for 13 million more people. That is a bold idea.
Elizabeth Warren makes the case for Medicare-for-all
Look, what families have to deal with is cost, total cost. That’s what they have to deal with. And understand, families are paying for their health care today. Families pay every time an insurance company says, sorry, you can’t see that specialist. Every time an insurance company says, sorry, that doctor is out of network, sorry, we are not covering that prescription.
Families are paying every time they don’t get a prescription filled because they can’t pay for it. They don’t have a lump checked out because they can’t afford the co-pay. What we’re talking about here is what’s going to happen in families’ pockets, what’s going to happen in their budgets.
And the answer is on Medicare-for-all, costs are going to go up for wealthier individuals and costs are going to go up for giant corporations. But for hard-working families across this country, costs are going to go down and that’s how it should work under Medicare-for-all in our health care system.
Beto O’Rourke reved up on taking assault guns away
I am [proposing to take away guns] if it’s a weapon that was designed to kill people on a battlefield. If the high impact, high velocity round, when it hits your body, shreds everything inside of your body, because it was designed to do that, so that you would bleed to death on a battlefield and not be able to get up and kill one of our soldiers.
When we see that being used against children, and in Odessa, I met the mother of a 15-year-old girl who was shot by an AR-15, and that mother watched her bleed to death over the course of an hour because so many other people were shot by that AR-15 in Odessa and Midland, there weren’t enough ambulances to get to them in time, hell, yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47. We’re not going to allow it to be used against our fellow Americans anymore.
And I want to say this. I’m listening to the people of this country. The day after I proposed doing that, I went to a gun show in Conway, Arkansas, to meet with those who were selling AR-15s and AK-47s and those who were buying those weapons. And you might be surprised, there was some common ground there, folks who said, I would willingly give that up, cut it to pieces, I don’t need this weapon to hunt, to defend myself. It is a weapon of war.
So, let’s do the right thing, but let’s bring everyone in America into the conversation, Republicans, Democrats, gun-owners, and non-gun owners alike.
Kamala Harris on international trade
We’ve got a guy in the White House who has been erratic on trade policy, he conducts trade policy by tweet, frankly born out of his fragile ego. It has resulted in farmers in Iowa with soybeans rotting in bins, looking at bankruptcy.
When we look at this issue, my trade policy, under a Harris administration, is always going to be about saying, we need to export American products, not American jobs, and to do that, we have to have a meaningful trade policy.
I’m not a protectionist Democrat. Look, we need to sell our stuff. And that means we need to sell it to people overseas. That means we need trade policies that allow that to happen. You asked earlier about China, it’s a complicated relationship. We have to hold China accountable. They steal our products, including our intellectual property. They dump sub-standard products into our economy. They need to be accountable. We also need to partner with China on climate and the crisis that presents. We need to partner with China on the issue of North Korea.
I’m on, and the only person on this stage, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Homeland Security Committee, and we need a partner on the issue of North Korea. But the bottom line is this, Donald Trump in office on trade policy, you know, he reminds me of that guy in The Wizard of Oz, when you pull back the curtain, it’s a really small dude.
