Nearly every Democrat on the 2020 presidential watchlist attended Al Sharpton’s National Action Network convention Friday, an event that helped launch then-candidate Barack Obama 11 years ago.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, Kamala Harris, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Elizabeth Warren all addressed those in attendance. This year, NAN marked the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.’s death, and the civil rights progress made since.
The potential 2020 candidates heralded the strides the U.S. has made, but warned that the country is heading backwards under President Trump. Even when some attempted to steer clear of mentioning the man in the White House, they couldn’t.
“I’m just closing my remarks, and I haven’t mentioned Donald Trump at all. Now why is that?” Booker, D-N.J., said. “It’s not about him; it’s about us. I am tired of people who spew hate turning us into haters.”
Gillibrand, D-N.Y., talked about her Christian faith, and like the other hopefuls stressed the need for unity over divisiveness.
“What makes America great is when we care for one and another,” she said.
Though Warren only named Trump once, she directed her ire at his policies and rhetoric. “We believe that racism, sexism, homophobia – hatred, injustice, and bigotry – have no place in our country,” Warren said. “We believe that black lives matter, and we’re not afraid to say so right out loud.”
The 2020 Democratic presidential contest is expected to be a wide-open affair, with potentially one of the largest fields in decades. Despite the diverse field, no candidate is currently favored to win the black vote.
“None of them have announced,” Sharpton said Friday when introducing Booker and Gillibrand. “They’re on what we call a temperature tour.”
But Sanders was on tour too, adding onto momentum he built during his presidential primary run against Hillary Clinton. Sanders hasn’t ruled out a 2020 run.
“I don’t want to spend a lot of time talking about Donald Trump,” Sanders said to laughs. “Not worth that much to talk about.”
Sanders quickly ticked off the policy differences between Trump and himself from healthcare to climate change before turning to his “main criticism” of the president, which “goes deeper.”
“He is doing something that no president — not even conservative presidents — have done in my lifetime and that is he is aggressively, and for cheap political gain, he is trying to divide the people of our country up based on color of their skin and where they came from, or their religion, or their sexual orientation, or their gender,” Sanders said.
“Now, it seems to me when you become president of the United States, there is one overriding responsibility that you have, and that is to bring the people together, not divide us up,” he continued.
Harris didn’t mention Trump by name in her speech, according to prepared remarks, but she criticized him throughout.
“They dare ask us the question, ‘What do you have to lose?’ Well, I’ll tell you what we have to lose and I’ll tell you what America has to lose,” Harris said. “What we have to lose is a justice system that is supposed to protect and treat everyone equally but our current Department of Justice has re-escalated the failed War on Drugs, [and] has emphasized incarceration instead of rehabilitation.”
“In so many ways, the pendulum is swinging backward,” Harris said. “ Let’s speak the truth that opportunity is still too far out of reach for too many of us.”
