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Seven Democratic Presidential Candidates Debating to Take on Trump

Ken Bredemeier

   WASHINGTON - Seven U.S. Democratic presidential candidates are debating
   again Thursday, offering themselves to U.S. voters as an alternative in
   next year's election to President Donald Trump, now newly impeached but
   undaunted in his quest for a second term in the White House.

   The one-time Democratic field of more than two dozen candidates has
   shrunk, as several candidates have dropped out of the chase for the
   party's nomination.

   The seven appearing on the debate stage at Loyola Marymount University
   in Los Angeles are led by former Vice President Joe Biden, senators
   Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, and
   South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. They all met the party's
   minimum requirements for enough voter support in polls and substantial
   fundraising to make the debate stage.

   Three others -- Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, billionaire activist
   Tom Steyer, and entrepreneur Andrew Yang -- join them. All of the
   previous debates had at least 10 candidates laying out their positions.

   More Democratic candidates who did not qualify for the sixth debate
   continue to campaign, still hoping to make a connection with voters six
   weeks before he party's first nominating contests in the midwestern
   state of Iowa, and later in the northeastern state of New Hampshire.

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