Senator Bernie Sanders kicks off 2020 election campaign

Washington: Democrat Senator Bernie Sanders on Saturday (local time) initiated his campaign for the 2020 Presidential elections Brooklyn, his birthplace, by attacking President Donald Trump to be “the most dangerous president in modern American history.”

“Thank you for being part of a campaign which is not only going to win the Democratic nomination, which is not only going to defeat Donald Trump, who is the most dangerous president in modern American history but with your help, we are going to transform this country,” CNN quoted Sanders as saying.

“Donald Trump wants to divide us up based on the colour of our skin, based on where we were born, based on our gender, our religion and our sexual orientation. What we are about is doing exactly the opposite. We are going to bring our people together,” the Senator added.

During the campaign, the Vermont Senator also got nostalgic remembering his childhood days. Sanders’ father was a Polish immigrant who came to America at 17 years old and later worked as a paint salesman. Sanders used his story in a contrast to Trump’s privileged background as the son of a wealthy real estate developer in New York.

“I am not going to tell you that I grew up in a home of desperate poverty. That would not be true. But what I will tell you is that coming from a lower-middle-class family I will never forget how money – or really lack of money – was always a point of stress in our home,” Sanders said, adding that his family lived paycheck to paycheck.

“I did not come from a family that taught me to build a corporate empire through housing discrimination. I protested housing discrimination,” he noted.

Apart from Sanders, so far, 10 Democrats have officially announced their run for the 2020 presidential elections, including Senator Cory Booker, former Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Julián Castro, former Maryland Representative John Delaney, Representative Tulsi Gabbard, Senator Kamala Harris, Governor of Washington Jay Inslee, Senator Amy Klobuchar, Senator Elizabeth Warren, Spiritual author Marianne Williamson and businessman Andrew Yang.

On February 19, Sanders announced that he will be contesting in the 2020 presidential election, marking his second consecutive bid for the Democratic nomination after losing to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

According to CNN, Sanders is one of the most popular politicians among Democratic voters and his policy agenda comprises of multiple progressive proposals including expansion of health care, broadening of the social safety net and making higher education free.

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