2020 Democrats flock to trendy SXSW festival in Texas

Associated Press

AUSTIN, Texas

A big chunk of the 2020 Democratic field began making Texas an unlikely early-state stop Saturday and pushed back on big tech in front of young, social-media savvy crowds in a city where companies including Google and Apple have big footprints.

Texas is an early primary state, but the real draw of the South by Southwest Festival in Austin for Democrats is face time with the party’s ascendant young and liberal wing. The festival has grown from obscure roots into a weeklong juggernaut of tech, politics and entertainment.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts defended her new call to break up tech giants to an audience dotted with employees of some of those very companies. Her appearance began with her interviewer asking tech employees in the crowd to stand up. Warren scanned the room as several people got on their feet.

“There are parts about big tech that are frankly just like railroads of the Teddy Roosevelt era,” she said. “What’s new is old. When someone gets market dominance, how then they start to destroy competition.”

Other highlights of Saturday campaigning:

AMY KLOBUCHAR

The Minnesota senator kicked off SXSW with promises to reign in tech companies and saying that she has spoken to former President Barack Obama about her own presidential ambitions.

Klobuchar wouldn’t go as far as Warren when asked whether Google or Facebook should be broken up.

KAMALA HARRIS

The California senator said she’s committed to shoring up rural communities, a message she shared with voters in some of the most sparsely populated parts of the early voting state of South Carolina.

Harris told a crowd of several hundred gathered in tiny St. George that a national infrastructure of crumbling roads and bridges makes it difficult for people in communities like this one to get to their jobs, which may be miles and miles away.

BERNIE SANDERS

Sanders told a packed house in Des Moines that as president, his power to reform industries and institutions would be limited, but he’d still fulfill his campaign promises with their support.

The Vermont senator said “no president, not the best-intentioned in the world, can take on those extraordinarily powerful forces.” He went on to say: “But we have something they don’t have – we have the people.”

JOHN HICKENLOOPER

Former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said during his first trip to Iowa as a candidate that it would be “crazy” to drive out everyone who’s in the U.S. illegally.

On immigration, Hickenlooper said both sides need to sit down and that hardliners must accept some realities.

“To think we’re ever in this country, that was founded and defined by immigrants, to expel 10 million to 11 million people is crazy,” Hickenlooper said.