Democratic presidential hopeful Tom Steyer on Thursday said he believes he has won the argument on whether or not President Trump should be impeached, after announcing in January that he planned to forgo a presidential run in order to focus on that issue.

“I felt at that point I had a responsibility to push the impeachment of Mr. Trump,” the billionaire environmental activist said on “CBS This Morning.”

“I’m going to continue to fund that, but I believe we’ve won that argument,” he said. “I think everybody in D.C., including Republicans, realizes that what we were saying for 20 months, before people came around to it, is now obvious and true.

“There’s still a question about whether it happens, but I felt as if watching that for the last six months and pushing it was a profound failure of government because everybody understands he should be impeached at this point,” he said.

Mr. Steyer’s 2020 Democratic rivals do support Congress at least a start on impeachment proceedings against Mr. Trump, but congressional Democrats have resisted moving forward. Public polling has shown that Americans remain intensely divided over the issue.

Mr. Steyer, who announced Tuesday that he was entering the presidential race, said he was watching the campaign and felt as if he “couldn’t sleep.”

“Because to me the biggest question facing the United States is not what we should do, but how are we going to break the corrupt stranglehold that corporations have on our government and how are we actually going to get done things that the American people want?” he said.

“How are we going to return power to the American people? That is the question in front of us today, and I didn’t feel it was being addressed,” he said.

Other presidential candidates including Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernard Sanders have also pushed an anti-corporate theme, and Washington Gov. Jay Inslee is focusing much of his presidential campaign on climate change, another topic near and dear to Mr. Steyer.

But Mr. Steyer said he is different because he is an “outsider,” though he has been a prolific donor to Democratic and liberal causes over the years.

Mr. Steyer on Thursday proposed a set of reforms intended to push power “back to the American people,” according to his campaign. His plan includes term limits for members of Congress, an annual national referendum process and a “vote at home” system across the country to increase voter participation.

“Unless we end the corporate corruption of our democracy, we won’t be able to pass any of the great plans put forward by the Democratic candidates for president,” he said in a statement.

“Here’s the difference between me and the other candidates. I don’t think we can fix our democracy from the inside. I don’t believe Washington and big corporations will let that happen,” he said.

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