2:57
Excited to be on stage with these leaders. We may disagree at times, but we all agree that defeating Trump and boldly addressing the challenges facing American families is essential.
— John Hickenlooper (@Hickenlooper) June 14, 2019
Socialism is not how we will achieve a progressive future. And I look forward to that debate. https://t.co/JQd9hvy9rk
Really looking forward to the first democratic debate on Wednesday the 26th. The challenges we face are the greatest in living memory but we have a big, bold, ambitious, forward-looking vision to share that will bring this country together to overcome every single one of them.
— Beto O'Rourke (@BetoORourke) June 14, 2019
A first chance to go head-to-head
The first debates of the nearly two-year-long primary season will give candidates a chance to confront each other head-on and come as candidates are beginning to draw sharp contrasts between each other on both substance and style.
Earlier this week former O'Rourke took aim at Biden, the early front-runner in the race questioning whether or not Biden is the candidate that can galvanize voters and reflects the shifting dynamics in today's Democratic Party.
\"We've got to be bigger. You've got to ask yourself where Joe Biden is on the issues that are most important to you,\" O'Rourke said in an interview on MSNBC Thursday morning, \"Did he support the war in Iraq that forever destabilized the Middle East? Did he really believe that women of lower incomes should be able to make their own decisions about their own body, to be able to afford health care in order to do that?\"
![\"PHOTO:](\"http://a.abcnews.com/images/Politics/bernie-sanders-gty-jt-190614_hpEmbed_3x2_384.jpg\")
The same day, Hickenlooper, who calls himself a \"pragmatic\" progressive, decried Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders' argument that Democratic Socialism is the most effective way to pass a progressive policy agenda.
\"The urgency now is even greater than before. Democrats must say loudly and clearly that we are not socialists. If we do not, we will end up helping to re-elect the worst President in our country’s history,\" Hickenlooper argued during a speech at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., \"'Socialism' is the most efficient attack line Republicans can use against Democrats as long as Trump is at the top of the ticket.\"
Now, Hickenlooper and Sanders will appear on the same stage later this month, a chance to hash out the argument over socialism directly.
The first debates will also give candidates their first opportunity to pitch their wide array of policy prescriptions to the major issues like climate change, healthcare, foreign policy, immigration and criminal justice reform, that have been percolating in the Democratic primary so far.
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