2020 Election Updates: Booker Makes Fall Debates; Steyer Says Impeachment Is Good Politics

Sanders and Warren ‘Great Friends’

Viewers may be looking for divisions at Tuesday’s debate in Detroit between Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders, but the two remain “great friends,” Sanders’s spokeswoman Briahna Joy Gray says.

“A lot of people have been trying to draw a contrast, but they are great friends,” Gray said on Bloomberg Television.

Gray criticized Senator Kamala Harris’s new health care plan, which she says won’t save as much money as Sanders’s plan and puts too much emphasis on preserving the private insurance industry.

Harris had co-sponsored Sanders’s Medicare for All legislation that would collapse all insurance into one government plan.

Cory Booker Makes Fall Debates

Cory Booker’s presidential campaign says the senator has met the Democratic National Committee’s tougher requirements for the next round of presidential debates in the fall.

The Booker campaign has raised funds from 130,000 individual donors and has met the bar in polling support, campaign manager Addisu Demissie said.

“We’re building this campaign the right way, brick by brick from the grassroots up, and we’re seeing the results of that strategy as we continue to build momentum,” Demissie said in a statement Monday. He added that about 25% of the donations came in after the first round of debates last month.

In a drive to begin thinning out a crowded field of nearly two dozen contenders, the Democratic National Committee established a higher bar for the fall debates. For the September and October face-offs, candidates must get donations from 130,000 unique donors in at least 20 states, with at least 400 donors from each jurisdiction. They also must have at least 2% support in four party-approved polls conducted between late June and late August.

The only other candidates to qualify so far include former Joe Biden, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Beto O’Rourke.

The second round of debates are Tuesday and Wednesday of this week.

Tom Steyer Says Impeachment Is Good Politics

As House Democrats examine whether to recommend articles of impeachment for Donald Trump, presidential contender Tom Steyer argued that it would be good politics for his party.

Steyer, 62, was an early proponent of impeachment, though he has usually justified the action on what he says are moral grounds. Speaking on NBC’s “Meet The Press” on Sunday, he said advancing a case would mobilize young and disaffected voters who believe neither party is listening to them.

“It will always be good politics to tell the truth, protect the Constitution and protect the American people,” the billionaire hedge fund manager said. Action would speak to the “tens of millions of Americans who don’t vote, because they don’t believe in the system,” he said.

Surveys show that majorities of Democratic voters favor impeachment but most Americans don’t want Congress to remove the president from office. House Democratic leaders have approached the issue cautiously for fear of being perceived as overreaching in their opposition to Trump.