Former President Barack Obama urged Democrats to offer proposals for progress on health care and inequality Friday evening in rare remarks on the 2020 presidential campaign — but he cautioned that most voters aren’t the same as “left-leaning Twitter feeds” and “don’t want to see crazy stuff” from Democratic presidential candidates.
Obama did not mention any candidates by name as he addressed the Democracy Alliance, a group of liberal donors who gathered this week to discuss their spending plans for the 2020 election. But as he spoke alongside Stacey Abrams, Democrats’ 2018 nominee for governor of Georgia, Obama appeared to critique the candidates pushing major change in the Democratic primary — such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren — as well as former Vice President Joe Biden, who has hugged Obama’s legacy close on the campaign trail, even as Obama says he’s eager for the party to move beyond the markers he set.
