Campaign 2020:
Potential Democratic presidential candidates Kamala Harris, Eric Garcetti and Tom Steyer court convention delegates.
SAN DIEGO — Three California Democrats often mentioned as potential 2020 presidential candidates — Sen. Kamala Harris, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti and billionaire San Francisco activist Tom Steyer — each test-drove messages Saturday that they could be repeating on the campaign trail next year in Iowa, the first caucus state.
Each has repeatedly denied that they’re running. But their approaches Saturday, delivered before a friendly, largely progressive audience of California Democratic Party convention delegates and donors, previewed what they may eventually preach in the cornfields after the calendar turns.
Though different, each approach shared a few basic themes: Democrats should be antiPresident Trump, but stop obsessing on him. Let’s unite Americans, not divide and scapegoat them. And let’s get Democrats to stick to a coherent, progressive message.
Harris largely steered clear of Trump bashing and focused on an economic appeal.
“Even though these times require us to fight and resist, let us remember we are not fighting against something, we are fighting for something,” she said.
“Democrats, the challenge for us in 2018 is to remind Americans of how much more we have in common than what separates us,” Harris said in a speech that mentioned the word “common” seven times and “all” a handful of others.
“We all want better wages for everyone, not just the top 1 percent. Which is why I’m fighting for a $15-an-hour national minimum wage,” Harris said. “Nobody should have to work a job flipping burgers when they’re 75 years old. Every American should be able to retire with dignity.”
Garcetti, who mentioned at several convention events over the weekend that he recently returned from a visit to the early primary state of South Carolina, said that “every day in this country, we hear that there are two Americas. But it’s not urban versus rural or coastal versus heartland. There’s Washington, and then there’s the rest of us,” Garcetti said.
Garcetti’s speech was more pointedly partisan, taking several shots at Trump, saying “the two Americas are ... those who fix our streets and those who send us tweets.”
“Let’s not spend our time worried about what we are fighting against. This year let us spend our time focused on what we are fighting for,” Garcetti said. He added that “every day that we’re responding to the toddler-in-chief’s latest rant is exactly where he wants us.”
Steyer, the former hedge fund manager, called out out his fellow Democrats as well as Republicans for allowing the U.S. to be “corrupted from a democracy of voters and values to one of dollars and donors. Republicans openly invited this. But Democrats, too often, let the downward spiral continue.”
He said “this isn’t just the headquarters of the resistance . ... We (Democrats) must be the architects sketching out a new vision for America.”
Steyer called for “five rights” to be the “backbone of the Democratic Party.” They included the right to a living wage and to organize in the workplace, a right to affordable health care, a right to clean air and water, free schooling from prekindergarten to university and the right to vote for everyone.
Steyer also asked Democrats to sign his online petition to impeach Trump, which is approaching 5 million supporters. Democrats should “demand the nuclear codes be taken out of his tiny hands.” On Sunday, Steyer will introduce another TV ad for this impeachment campaign, saying that Trump has done nothing to protect Americans from future Russian hacking attacks.