Kamala Harris calls for impeachment as CNN hosts 2020 contenders

Five Democratic presidential hopefuls held televised town halls on Monday night, during a gruelling five hour block of programming on CNN that gave a look at the topics that could shape the primaries.

Kamala Harris came out in support of impeaching Donald Trump. Bernie Sanders said he was in favor of people in prison being able to vote – even “terrible people” such as the Boston Marathon bomber. Elizabeth Warren ably addressed the problem of sexism and double standards in politics.

Here’s a look at some of the main takeaways from the discussions.

A split emerges over impeachment...

Now that the Mueller report has been released, the issue of whether Democrats should move to boot Trump from the White House is becoming a key question for presidential candidates.

Related: Mueller links Trump and campaign to 11 instances of potential obstruction

On Friday, the day after the redacted report was published, Elizabeth Warren became the first of the 2020 batch to call for the president to be impeached. On Monday, the California Senator Kamala Harris joined her.

“I believe Congress should take the steps toward impeachment,” Harris told the crowd to applause. But none of Bernie Sanders, Amy Klobuchar or Pete Buttigieg committed to beginning a process that could trigger Trump’s early ousting.

Bernie Sanders said what was “most important” to him was to see Trump not re-elected. The Vermont senator said he supported the House investigating Trump, but said he didn’t want to see Congress spending “the next year, year-and-a-half” talking about impeachment at the expense of issues like the minimum wage, climate change and racism.

“What I worry about is that works to Trump’s advantage,” Sanders said.

“If the House brings the impeachment proceedings before us, we will deal with them,” said Amy Klobuchar, the senator from Minnesota. Later on in her appearance Klobuchar was a little less milquetoast, adding: “What I will say is there are very disturbing things that would lead you to believe there’s obstruction of justice.”

Pete Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, was also reluctant to get involved in the impeachment discussion.

“He’s made it pretty clear he deserves impeachment,” Buttigieg said. “I’m going to leave it to the House and Senate to figure that out.”

… and on voting rights

Sanders, in a move that has given Fox News several hours of material, said he believed voting rights should extend to people serving prison sentences, including the Boston Marathon bomber and other “terrible people”.

Asked by an audience member if he believed incarcerated people should be allowed to vote, Sanders said: “Yes, even for terrible people, because once you start chipping away and you say: ‘Well, that guy committed a terrible crime, not going to let him vote. Well, that person did that. Not going to let that person vote,’ you’re running down a slippery slope.”

Harris gave a vague response, offering: “I think we should have that conversation”, while for Buttigieg, it was a firm no. Both Harris and Buttigieg said they believed felons who have served their sentence should have their right to vote restored. Currently voting rights for felons are decided by state, which has led to a hodgepodge of ballot casting laws.

Warren and Klobuchar were before Sanders in the line-up, and didn’t get the voter rights question.

Elizabeth Warren talks sexism… and how she will counter it

The Massachusetts senator was asked how she would combat sexism during the election – specifically the risk of being “Hillary’ed”.

It was an opportunity for Warren to switch from her focus on detailed policy and tell a human story, breaking with the perception – arguably fueled by sexism itself – that she is “aloof” or “unlikable”.

Warren said that when she ran for the Senate in 2011 she was told by some Democrats she shouldn’t run as Massachusetts “was not ready to have a woman senator or governor”.

She remembered that during her campaign she would make sure to introduce herself to young girls at events.

“I would say: ‘Hi, my name is Elizabeth, and I’m running for Senate because that’s what girls do,’” Warren said. After lusty applause, she said she would “pinky swear” with those girls that they would remember.

Her plan, Warren said, was to: “Organize, build a grassroots movement, fight for working people, and that’s how I am going to be the first woman elected president of the United States.”

Harris pledges action on gun control

The California Senator Kamala Harris told the crowd that she would give Congress “100 days” to pass “reasonable gun safety laws”. If they fail to do that, Harris said, she would take executive action.

“Specifically what I would do is put in place a requirement that for anyone who sells more than five guns a year they are required to do background checks when they sell those guns.

“I will require that for any gun dealer that breaks the law the ATF [the bureau of alcohol, tobacco and firearms] take their license.”

The “third piece” of her plan, Harris said, was to ensure “fugitives from justice” are not able to purchase a gun. Her proposals have been praised by gun safety advocates.

Buttigieg promises policies… at some point

As the CNN host Anderson Cooper pointed out, Pete Buttigieg’s campaign website does not have a policy section. In response Buttigieg said Democrats should not “drown people in minutiae”.

The South Bend mayor said he had “been pretty clear where I stand on major issues”, and said he would take his time in laying out concrete objectives.

“We’ll continue to roll out specific policy proposals,” Buttigieg said.

“But I also think it’s important we don’t drown people in minutiae before we’ve vindicated the values that animate our policies. We go right to the policy proposals and we expect people to be able to figure out what our values must be from that.”

Sanders defends democratic socialism

“My father’s family left Soviet Russia in 1979, fleeing from some of the very same socialist policies that you seem eager to implement in this country,” an audience member told Bernie Sanders.

She asked Sanders how he rectified his “notion of democratic socialism with the failures of socialism in nearly every country that has tried it”.

Sanders, pointed out that Soviet Russia, or the USSR, did not practice democratic socialism.

“Is it your assumption that I believed in authoritarian communism that was in the Soviet Union? I haven’t, and I opposed it,” Sanders said. He went on to give a description – which will be familiar to anyone who has seen a Sanders campaign speech – of how he interprets democratic socialism.

“I believe in a democratic civilized society healthcare is a human right. Government should make that happen. I believe that every young person in this country regardless of his or her income has the right to get all the education they need,” Sanders said.