“The Democratic Party needs someone like myself who can actually go toe to toe with the president on the economy," Democratic presidential candidate John Delaney said. | Bebeto Matthews/AP Photo 2020 Elections Delaney slams 'half-baked socialist policies' from 2020 field's left flank

Former congressman and 2020 presidential hopeful John Delaney on Tuesday slammed the progressive proposals of his left-leaning fellow candidates, blasting policies such as the "Green New Deal" and "Medicare for All" as “fundamentally flawed.”

Asked how he planned to stand apart from those on the Democratic field's left flank on a debate stage, the relatively centrist Delaney told conservative talk radio host Hugh Hewitt he planned to attack the feasibility of his more liberal counterparts’ marquee proposals.


“I'm just going to point out: Their policies are bad policies,” Delaney, who until earlier this year represented Western Maryland in Congress, said. “Medicare for All — in terms of the bill that’s been introduced in the Senate — is fundamentally bad health care policy. Putting aside we have no way of paying for it, even if we were able to pay for it, it still would be bad policy.”

Delaney is not the only Democrat running for president who’s been skeptical of moving to a single-payer health system like Medicare for All, nor has he been shy about his opposition to his fellow Democrats' embrace of a larger role for the federal government. The former congressman did not mince words on another ambitious proposal that has divided Democrats: the Green New Deal, which calls for reducing greenhouse gas emissions to net zero by 2030 and attempts to anticipate the shock wave such a drastic transition would send through the economy.

COUNTDOWN TO 2020 The race for 2020 starts now. Stay in the know. Follow our presidential election coverage. Email Sign Up By signing up you agree to receive email newsletters or alerts from POLITICO. You can unsubscribe at any time. This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Delaney argued that the proposal sets an “unrealistic goal” that could drastically hike the cost of energy and that there are less disruptive ways to address the threat of climate change.

“There’s a much better way to deal with climate change than the Green New Deal, which will in many ways crush working families,” he told Hewitt, citing his proposal to enact a carbon tax and expand carbon capture technology throughout the country.

“So I’m going to take them on hard on their policies, which I think are fundamentally flawed and are not going to move this country forward in the right direction and are going to hurt a lot of people,” he said. He added that if Democrats take on Trump with "bad policy, we're not gonna win."

Asked whether he considered Trump’s oversight of a growing economy could kneecap the eventual Democratic nominee, Delaney argued that certain statistics like unemployment that the president has lauded mask more pressing concerns like wage growth and job stability.

“On kind of a macro level, if you just look at a couple of big stats, yes the economy is doing well,” Delaney said, but the former businessman asserted he was better suited to take on Trump over the more nuanced aspects of the economy than some of his opponents whose “socialist” policies he has derided.

“The Democratic Party needs someone like myself who can actually go toe to toe with the president on the economy and where voters will believe with a Delaney administration that the economy’s not going to go off the rails by embracing some half-baked socialist policies,” he said, pledging that his administration would ensure economic growth is “more broadly shared” than under the current administration.