“If you are tired of the noise and the nonsense, you’ve got a home with me because I don’t want to be the president for half of America.”
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
“At our best, we unify, we find common cause and common purpose. … [We must] unite America for common cause and common purpose.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
"We must and will defeat Trump, the most dangerous president in the history of this country.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“The American people are divided and doubtful at the very moment we need to rise. … That’s why I am asking for your vote.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“I have a few words for Donald Trump. … You have used hate, intimidation, fear and over 12,000 lies as a way to distract from your failed policies and your broken promises.”
Beto O'Rourke (Former Texas congressman)
“We have to see clearly, we have to speak honestly and we have to act decisively.”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“We have to get our country working for us again instead of the other way around. … It’s time to trust ourselves more than our politicians.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“This is the United States of America. … We’re walking with our heads down like woe is me. … We should get moving.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“The paths to America’s middle class have gotten a lot smaller. … I know what’s broken, I know how to fix it and I’m going to lead the fight to get it done.”
Julián Castro (Former HUD secretary)
"We need a bold vision: universal pre-K and universal health care, unleashing millions of new jobs in the clean energy economy, a tax system that rewards people who have to work for a living."
Health care
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“I’ve actually never met anybody who likes their health insurance company. … What they want is access to health care.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
“We’re going to stand up to the greed and corruption and the price-fixing of the pharmaceutical industry.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
“When it comes to our heatlh care and when it comes to our premiums, I go with the doctors’ creed, which is do no harm.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“I trust the American people to make the right choice for them, why don’t you?”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“I know that our current health care system makes it harder to hire people. … the pitch we have to make to the American people is we will get the health care weight off your backs.”
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
“I believe in Medicare for all. I believe it’s the best way to rationalize the system. … There is an urgency right now in this nation.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“I lay out [in my health care plan] how I can pay for it, how I can get it done and why it’s better.”
Racial divide
Beto O'Rourke (Former Texas congressman)
“We have a white supremacist in the White House and he poses a mortal threat to people of color across this country.”
Julián Castro (Former HUD secretary)
“We need to root out racism and I believe that we can do that because that doesn’t represent the majority of Americans.”
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
“We have systemic racism that is eroding our nation. … We have a criminal justice system that is so racially biased.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“What’s deepened divisions in this country is the conduct of this president.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“Nobody should be in jail for a nonviolent crime. … Nobody should be in jail for a drug problem. We have to change the whole way we look at this.”
Gun violence
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“I'm the only one up here that’s ever beat the NRA. … I’m the guy that brought the Brady Bill into focus and became law.”
Beto O'Rourke (Former Texas congressman)
“When we see that being used against children … hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“The idea that we would wait for this Congress, which has just done nothing to act, it is overlooking the fact that every day in America our babies are going to school to have drills. … It is traumatizing our children.”
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
“I personally think we should start with a voluntary buy-back program. … We’ve got to send a message to [Sen.] Mitch McConnell.”
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
“This is a crisis of empathy in our nation. We are never going to solve this crisis if we have to wait for it to personally affect us.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“Until we attack the systemic problems, we can’t get gun reform in this country. We’ve got to go straight against this industry.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
“What we are looking at is a corrupt political system. … I will not be intimidated by the NRA.”
Immigration
Julián Castro (Former HUD secretary)
“[Biden] wants to take credit for Obama’s work but not have to answer any questions. … We’re going to pass immigration reform within the first 100 days.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
"[The Obama administration] didn’t lock people up in cages, we didn’t separate families.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“Immigration makes us stronger. I want to see us expand legal immigration and create a pathway to citizenship for our dreamers but also for their grandparents.”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“I would return the level of legal immigration to the point it was in the Obama/Biden administration.”
China tariffs
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
“If we are not careful he is going to bankrupt this country. … The leaders of the world are watching this and it undermines our strength as a nation.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“Our trade policy in America has been broken for decades. … I want to negotiate trade with unions at the table … small farmers at the table … environmentalists at the table.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“The president clearly has no strategy. … The problem is this is a moment when American leadership is needed more than ever.”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“I would let the Chinese know that we have to hammer out a deal. … The imbalances are real.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“My trade policy … is always going to be about we need to export American products, not American jobs.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
“Trump obviously hasn’t a clue. Trump thinks that trade policy is a tweet at 3 o’clock in the morning.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“We’re either going to make policy or China is going to make the rules of the road. … The problem is they’re stealing our intellectual property.”
Afghanistan
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“We need to bring our troops home. … We’re not going to bomb our way to a solution in Afghanistan.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“We have got to put an end to endless war and the way we do it is see to it that that country will never again be used for an attack [on the U.S.]"
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“It’s an open secret … that I was opposed to the surge in Afghanistan. … We don’t need those troops there.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
“I am the only person up here to have voted against all three of Trump’s military budgets. … We don’t even know who our enemy is.”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“I’ve signed a pledge to end the forever wars. … I would lead our armed forces with restraint and judgment.”
Climate change
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
“This is the existential crisis of our time. … Having someone leading the ticket from the Midwest will allow us to talk about this in a different way.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“We need to work on every front on climate change. It is the threat to every living thing on this planet and we are running out of time.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“This is a problem that was created by human behaviors and we can change our behaviors.”
Education
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
“Step one is appoint a secretary of education who actually believes in public education. I believe in public education.”
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
“We need to pay teachers more. … We need to lighten up the emphasis on standardized tests.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
“Money for public schools should stay in public schools, not go anywhere else. … We will have a secretary of education who has been a public school teacher.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“Our teachers, 94% of them, are coming out of their own pocket to pay for school supplies and that is wrong.”
Julián Castro (Former HUD secretary)
“We have to connect the dots, to uplift the quality of life … to invest in community schools … and those things that truly ensure that the entire family can prosper.”
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
“A lot of folks here are talking about raising teacher salaries but we actually did it in Newark, N.J. … Strategies like investing in our children work.”
Setbacks
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (Minn.)
“My challenges and resiliences have brought me up here,” including her father’s alcoholism and her early advocacy for 48-hour hospital stays for new moms.
Sen. Cory Booker (N.J.)
People in my community told me don’t give up. “We didn’t give up and we transformed our city. … Trust people.”
Mayor Pete Buttigieg (South Bend, Ind.)
After hiding his sexuality in the military and as mayor, he realized “you only get to live one life” and came out. Then voters “decided to trust me.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.)
“I have taken on virtually every powerful special interest in this country whether it is Wall Street … the pharmaceutical industry … a military industrial complex or a prison industrial complex.”
Joseph Biden (Former vice president)
“I was raised to believe that [family] was the center of everything.” After family deaths, “the way you deal with it is finding purpose in what you do.”
Sen. Elizabeth Warren (Mass.)
At the end of her first year of teaching, she was pregnant and had to quit. “I said I’ll go to law school. … I got back up, i fought back. I know what’s broken. I want to be in the fight to fix it.”
Sen. Kamala Harris (Calif.)
“I didn’t listen” when told repeatedly that someone with her background couldn’t win elections.
Andrew Yang (Entrepreneur)
His first company as an entrepreneur “flopped.” Then he picked himself up and never forgot how isolating that was.
Beto O'Rourke (Former Texas congressman)
“In the face of this act of terror that was directed on [El Paso] … we were not defeated by that, nor were we defined by that.”
Julián Castro (Former HUD secretary)
Pressured to vote for a land deal for a legal client while serving on the San Antonio City Council, he quit his job, then voted against it. “I stood up for the people I was there to represent.”
