A number of 2020 Democratic presidential candidates reunited for a Zoom call on the final night of the Democratic National Convention on Thursday, reminiscing about their time on the trail and touting their support for Democratic nominee Joe Biden.
“You can think of this as sort of like ‘Survivor’ on the out-interviews of all the people who got voted off the island,” joked Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.), who led the conversation.
Booker was joined by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), former South Bend, Ind., Mayor Pete Buttigieg (D), former Rep. Beto O’Rourke (D-Texas) and businessman Andrew Yang.
The roughly five-minute virtual reunion was filled with lighthearted banter about their time competing against Biden on the trail, as well as more personal and serious moments.
“You remember the steak fry when we were about to go on?” Buttigieg said. “It worked out to where I was there the same time he was and he pulled me aside and he pointed to somebody we both knew who was working on my campaign, but he’d known before, and let me know that that was somebody who’d gone through a family tragedy that Joe somehow knew about. And just thought it was important for me to know that about someone who was working with me.”
Warren said she saw Biden “the clearest” on the first anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing.
“At some point in that speech, he shifted to the parent who had lost a child. To the man who had lost a wife. To someone who had experienced loss very personally, and he spoke to each of the families from the heart,” Warren said.
Sanders, who on the convention’s first night urged Democrats to vote for Biden, renewed that call, saying it was the most important presidential election in history.
He also joked, after Booker asked why his girlfriend, the actress Rosario Dawson, liked Sanders more, “because she’s smarter than you.”
A number of the former 2020 contenders were not present on the Zoom call, including former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who delivered his own remarks following the segment.