Bennet says principles not moderation will beat Trump in 2020

Zachary Oren Smith | Press Citizen

As the snow fell outside the Carpenters Local 1260 hall, Colorado Senator Michael Bennet was inside warming Iowans to a campaign he insists is not about moderate politics.

“I don’t believe I’ve compromised my principles or the Democratic Party’s principles, and I think that is important,” Bennet told the crowd. He said he agrees with the diagnosis that the left-leaning end of the party is offering. He agrees with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders about the corrosive nature of income inequality. “He and I just have different ideas about how to get there. And I don’t think my ideas are any less principled. I don’t think they are moderate.”

Bennet runs in a pack of 2020 Democratic Presidential candidates unable to clear the Democratic National Committees requirements to enter the televised presidential debates. If there is a trail to the White House, Bennet will need to find ways of standing out. While debate performances are one way of doing so, surging in an early voting state could give Bennet the momentum he needs.

On Sunday in Iowa City, the former Denver Schools superintendent argued his brand of politics is the way to beat President Donald Trump and bring about lasting change.

“What we have to do is beat Donald Trump and I think I’m best situated to do that. Obviously, partly because of the experience of winning a purple state. But also because of the agenda I put forward on healthcare, on taxes, on making work pay again, on climate change,” Bennet said. “I think it is a set of policies that will galvanize not just Democrats but also some of the nine million people that voted twice for Barack Obama and once for Donald Trump.”

Voters in these 206 so-called “pivot counties” helped Trump win. Of the 34 states that held pivot counties, Iowa had the most with 31. For Democrats to win in 2020, they must avoid losing these counties again.

“I don't think we are going to trick those people into voting for us because we offered them a bunch of free stuff,” Bennet said. “I think what they want to have is a sense that we have an agenda that will unleash opportunity in this country. Where the zip code a kid is born in doesn’t determine where they end up.”

To help make this case, Bennet is angling for endorsements from these areas. While unreleased, a staffer said they plan to release these endorsements in the coming month.

In addition to the electoral math, Bennet connected his purple state appeal to how Democrats can achieve some of the ambitious plans on their agenda like climate change.

“If you accept our current politics — which is McConnel's world, Trump's world — I would argue that you can't solve climate change because we are living in a world right now where I put my ideas in for two years, the other side rips them out. I put them in for four years, the other side rips them out. ... You can't solve climate (change) two years at a time,” Bennet said. “Yes we have to act urgently, but we have to act in a way that will create durable solutions.”

For evidence of brokering for change, Bennet pointed to his work on the “Gang of Eight,” a bipartisan group of eight U.S. Senators who drafted an immigration reform bill in 2013. The bill passed the Senate with a strong bipartisan 68 to 32 vote only to be stopped when Speaker of the House John Boehner refused to act on the bill.

This appealed to potential voter Craig Gustaveson, who eferred to himself as a “former Republican." While he maintained that he was planning to caucus for former Vice President Joe Biden, he said candidates like Bennet are the reason people like him defected to the Democratic Party.

“I think he is one of these compassionate, genuine people,” Gustaveson said. “I think Mike hit a lot of the things that a lot of us are worried about: the deficit, healthcare. … He is what we need to see more of.”

Still, Bennet is bent on eschewing comparisons to candidates like Biden.

"When Joe Biden says this will all go back to normal after we get rid of Mitch McConnel, I say, that's not right because the last six years of Barack Obama being there, that wasn't normal," Bennet said. "The only way that we are going to do this is by defeating them in the polls, which I believe we need to do with an agenda like the one I proposed. Because I think my agenda will attract some of the people that voted for Barack Obama in twice and Trump once. And I don't think Bernie's agenda will. If you don't win, you can't do any of it."

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Zachary Oren Smith writes about government, growth and development for the Press-Citizen. Reach him at zsmith@press-citizen.com or 319 -339-7354, and follow him on Twitter via @zacharyos.