At The Washington Post’s 2020 Candidate Forum, Cory Booker suggested that if people are not actively against racism, they are complicit with racism.

“It’s not enough to say you’re not racist, you need to attack racism,” Booker said. “If you just sit by and content yourself with just not being what Donald Trump is…this is a letter to white moderates.”

Booker’s solution to the racism that apparently plagues everyone with white skin is to become a radical activist of love.

“Love is not a feeling,” Booker said. “Love simply says we have a common cause.”

Paraphrased, this all means, vote for me or you’re an unloving racist. Subtle, right?

Throughout the duration of this forum, Booker used multiple Martin Luther King Jr. quotes while simultaneously drawing parallels between himself and the leader of the Civil Rights Movement.

Booker also attacked Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders for their voting record on what is commonly known as the Crime Bill of 1994.

“That bill put mass incarceration on steroids,” Booker said. “This is one of the worst laws in my lifetime.”

Booker continued by saying that “mass incarceration is the cancer of our society.”

Booker challenged all of the 2020 Democratic candidates to pledge to be an agent of liberty and liberate those who are sitting in prisons because of the 1994 Crime Bill.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. @CoryBooker says he wants other candidates to pledge to take on prison reform, calling mass incarceration a “cancer on the soul of our country.” https://t.co/HIvTTAuDeX #postlive pic.twitter.com/Dad4AuCMcX — Washington Post Live (@postlive) July 18, 2019

Throughout his monologue on criminal justice reform, Booker proclaimed that apologies are not enough for what has been done to those incarcerated from the 1994 Crime Bill. Yet, he doesn’t know why Biden and Sanders have yet to apologize for voting favorably for this bill.

Why does it matter whether or not they apologize for a bill if the apology won’t be adequate?

On the Washington Post’s stage, Booker exemplified how identity politics are what defines his campaign in the 2020 Democratic field.