“What we have to remind ourselves is, 2020 is not 2016. The world has changed,” she said, recalling the protest marches after Mr. Trump’s inauguration and the Democratic victories in 2018 in the House of Representatives and key governorships, and in 2019 in Kentucky, Louisiana and Virginia.
“We are getting stronger and we are in this fight,” she said. “2020 gives us this remarkable moment that is very different from ’16 or ’12 or ’08 or however far you want to go back. This moment where Americans are off the sidelines.”
Saying that “the door is open a crack” to an era of major reforms and the end of “business as usual,” she added: “Think about it — a nation that elects someone like Donald Trump is a nation that has got serious problems. Going back is not where we want to be. Our chance in 2020 is to look at that crack, drop our shoulder, run hard at it and build the America we want to be.”
Asked for comment, a Republican National Committee spokesman, Steve Guest, said, “Insulting half the country didn’t work for Hillary Clinton in 2016, and it won’t work for the Democrats in 2020, either.”
Mr. Sanders, another leading progressive in the race, also waded into the debate over how to defeat Mr. Trump as he uncorked some of his fiercest criticism of Mr. Biden to date in an interview with The Washington Post.
“It’s just a lot of baggage that Joe takes into a campaign, which isn’t going to create energy and excitement,” Mr. Sanders said. “He brings into this campaign a record which is so weak that it just cannot create the kind of excitement and energy that is going to be needed to defeat Donald Trump.”
Mr. Sanders on Thursday reported an eye-popping fund-raising haul of more than $34.5 million in the fourth quarter of 2019, according to his campaign, ahead of Mr. Biden at $22.7 million — Mr. Biden’s strongest quarter to date — as well as former Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Ind., whose campaign reported more than $24.7 million.