Barack Obama warns progressives to avoid ‘circular firing squad’ ahead of 2020 US presidential election
- Obama warned progressives against ‘shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues’
- His remarks come as Democrat contenders have come under fire online, including Obama’s ex-VP Joe Biden, accused of inappropriately touching women
Barack Obama warned on Saturday that US progressives risk creating a “circular firing squad” at a time when prospective presidential candidates are competing fiercely against each other to run against President Donald Trump in the 2020 elections.
The former president was speaking in Berlin, at an Obama Foundation event.
“One of the things I do worry about sometimes among progressives in the United States,” he said, “maybe it’s true here as well, is a certain kind of rigidity where we say, ‘Uh, I’m sorry, this is how it’s going to be’ and then we start sometimes creating what’s called a ‘circular firing squad’, where you start shooting at your allies because one of them has strayed from purity on the issues.
“And when that happens, typically the overall effort and movement weakens.”
Among Democrats, the field of prospective presidential nominees has swollen to nearly 20. All are eager to appeal to a party base pushed left in opposition to a hard-right president and motivated by success in the midterm elections.