The top Democrats in the 2020 presidential nomination race clashed over health care and other priorities in Wednesday’s debate, laying bare their divide between moderate and liberal policy platforms.
Joe Biden and other leading White House contenders also square off at the latest Democratic presidential debate, seeking to blunt the surge of rising-star candidate Pete Buttigieg.
Former vice-president Biden, senator Elizabeth Warren and senator Bernie Sanders lead in national polling for the Democratic nomination, as anxiety about who will challenge president Donald Trump grows.
After an opening phase dominated by talk of impeachment of Donald Trump, participants in the fifth Democratic debate locked horns over health care, in particular the costly universal coverage program supported by liberal senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.
‘The fact is that right now the vast majority of Democrats do not support Medicare for All,’ frontrunner and former vice-president Joe Biden said.
‘It couldn’t pass the United States Senate right now with Democrats. It couldn’t pass the House.’
Biden proposes building on the existing Obamacare and adding a public option for health care, and ‘not make people choose.’
Pete Buttigieg, currently the ascendant candidate in the race and who is running in the same moderate lane as Biden, said Democrats can seize a majority on issues like immigration and guns, ‘if we can galvanise, not polarise that majority.’
On health care he too attacked the liberals, saying government should not be ‘commanding people’ to accept Medicare for All.
‘Whether we wait three years as senator Warren has proposed or whether you do it right out of the gate is not the right approach to unify the American people around a very, very big transformation that we now have an opportunity to deliver,’ said Buttigieg, who is the mayor of the small town of South Bend, Indiana.
But the three septuagenarian political veterans are seeking to blunt the surge of 37-year-old Buttigieg, a military veteran and the first gay candidate with a viable shot at the White House, as anxiety builds about who will challenge Trump.
Buttigieg is cracking into the top tier with a steady rise in the past month, particularly in early-voting states like Iowa where he has seized the momentum.
His unruffled campaign demeanour and pragmatic reform proposals have gained traction in Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states that vote first in the nomination race.
But even as the 10 qualifying candidates rumbled in their nationally televised showdown in Atlanta, dominating the political discourse is the high-stakes impeachment hearings into Trump’s dealings with Ukraine.
Democrats accuse Trump of conditioning military aid and a White House meeting on Kiev’s announcing investigations of Biden and his son Hunter, who worked with a Ukrainian energy company while his father was vice-president.
Testifying just hours before the debate, Gordon Sondland, ambassador to the European Union, said he was ordered by Trump to seek a deal in which Ukraine would probe Biden in exchange for a White House meeting.-AFP
