WASHINGTON (AP) – Several Democratic White House hopefuls today participated in a forum in which they showed their proposals for African-Americans in an attempt to challenge that vote to former vice president Joe Biden, a favorite according to polls.
His main rival, Senator Bernie Sanders, defended in the event his controversial proposal to allow prisoners the right to vote, a collective in which African-Americans are overrepresented.
“If you are a US citizen, you have the right to vote, even if you are in jail,” Sanders told activists at Trinity University in Washington, which has a majority of African-American students.
Republicans “know – he added – that if poor people, people of color and young people could vote, they would lose a lot.”
Senator Kamala Harris, meanwhile, who for years was a prosecutor in California, also addressed the problems of the justice system and proposed eliminating the private management of prisons.
He also said that racial minorities are more likely to plead guilty to crimes they did not commit because they could not afford a lawyer: “This is a problem of economic justice and criminal justice, and must be addressed quickly,” he said.
Senator Elizabeth Warren also spoke about her tax plan for the wealthiest, with which she intends to allocate funds to African-American universities. This proposal is in addition to its plan to support small businesses owned by racial minorities with 7,000 million dollars.
Biden, meanwhile, also participated in the forum in Washington, where he attacked the president, Donald Trump, who tomorrow will officially launch his campaign for re-election at an event in Orlando (Florida).
“We have to stop letting these guys use the division that exists in the country, as charlatans always do, to divide the country, we have a guy in the White House who has turned this into an art,” he said. Vice President of Barack Obama between 2009 and 2017.
Biden, Sanders, Harris and Warren participated along with other Democratic aspirants of less profile in a forum, centered in the poverty, that the Reverend William Barber II organized in the federal capital.
According to a YouGov poll released last week by The Economist, 50% of African-American voters will vote for Biden in the primary, for 10% who will vote for Sanders and 7% who prefer Harris.
That same poll indicated that Biden is also the favorite among all voters, although with 26%, Warren would follow with 16% and Sanders with 12%.
An average of recent polls conducted by Real Clear Politics shows that Biden is the favorite of 32.2% of Democrats, followed by Sanders with 15.2%, Warren (11.6%), Peter Buttigieg (7%) and Harris (6.8%).
All of them will face each other between June 26 and 27 in the first debate organized by the Democratic Party among the candidates for the White House, to which 20 pre-candidates are summoned. (EFEUSA)
