The Vermont senator said
defeating Trump in 2020 will require "ideas that are going to excite and
energize millions of people who right now are not particularly active in
politics, and who may not vote at all."
Warning that President Donald
Trump cannot be defeated by an establishment Democrat running a "same old,
same old type of campaign," Sen. Bernie Sanders said in an interview with
the Los Angeles Times editorial board published Thursday that Trump
would have a field day with former Vice President Joe Biden's record of support
for the Iraq War, job-killing trade deals, and other destructive policies.
“Joe Biden is a personal
friend of mine, so I'm not here to, you know, to attack him," Sanders
said. "But my God, if you are, if you're a Donald Trump and you got Biden
having voted for the war in Iraq, Biden having voted for these terrible, in my
view, trade agreements, Biden having voted for the bankruptcy bill. Trump will
eat his lunch."
The Los Angeles Times interview
was not the first time Sanders has distinguished his own record from Biden's by
highlighting the former vice president's support for the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
During a Democratic
primary debate in September, Sanders noted that, unlike Biden, he
"never believed what Cheney and Bush said about Iraq."
"I voted against the war
in Iraq, and helped lead the opposition," the Vermont senator said.
Sanders told the Times that
defeating Trump in 2020 will require a candidate who embraces "ideas that
are going to excite and energize millions of people who right now are not
particularly active in politics, and who may not vote at all"—and the
Vermont senator argued he is the Democratic contender best positioned to
deliver such a campaign.
"The reason I believe
that I am the strongest candidate, and the reason I believe our approach is
right is if you want a large voter turnout, if we understand that there are
tens of millions of people in this country who don't vote, who've kind of given
up on the political process... I think I am by far the strongest candidate to
reach out to those people," Sanders said. "I think I'm the strongest
candidate to bring together a multiracial coalition of African Americans, of
Latinos, of Asians."
Though Trump polls as one of
the most
unpopular presidents in U.S. history, Sanders warned against
underestimating him, as many did in the 2016 election.
"Anyone who underestimates
Donald Trump as a candidate, for a variety of reasons, will be very
mistaken," said Sanders. "He is going to be a very, very strong
candidate. He certainly has a very strong base. He will have unlimited amounts
of money to campaign on. He is a pathological liar. He will merge in an
unprecedented way agencies of government with his campaign, because he doesn't
particularly believe in the rule of law. So he is going to be a very, very
tough opponent."
"The only way that you
beat Trump," Sanders added, "is by having an unprecedented campaign,
an unprecedentedly large voter turnout."
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