Presidential candidate Sen. Michael Bennet may not qualify for the third Democratic debates in September, but that does not mean he will quit the race. During an interview with Boston Public Radio, the senator from Colorado said that he thinks too much media attention has been focused on the debates. He also pointed out that at this point in 2004 and 2008, both Barack Obama and John Kerry were polling poorly and went on to win the Iowa caucuses.
“The American people can’t discern almost anything about these candidates based on them standing on the stage for four or five minutes,” Bennet said.
Though Bennet acknowledged that he’s struggling in the polls, he also critiqued the notion that the dialogue surrounding the Democratic nomination has been focused on horse race politics and not as much on policy.
“There’s a much richer conversation going on in these early states where people haven’t made their mind up and this time,” Bennet said.
Bennet is a two term senator who was instrumental in crafting the ill-fated 2013 immigration bill that would have created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. Politically, he’s been described as a moderate, and has built his campaign around healthcare, voter security and ending the influence of large corporations on politics.
“I think the question before us [is] whether we have the capacity and the guts to end this gilded age that we’re living in right now the way that Teddy Roosevelt and the Americans of that generation had the guts to end that gilded age,” Bennet said.
Also central to his pitch is that he’s witnessed the impact partisanship has had on the political process. Earlier in the year, in a moment that went viral, Bennet — who has been praised for his emphasis on bipartisanship — took to the floor and denounced Sen. Ted Cruz for endorsing a government shutdown for politics. He accused Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of having a cynical view of politics that has been a major impediment to crafting any meaningful legislation.
“We’ve accepted a politics where one group of people comes in they put their stuff in for two years, another group comes in they rip it out,” Bennet said.
While Bennet has plans to address election security and money in politics, he’s been heavily campaigning on his plan to expand Medicare to create a public option any American can buy into. Medicare X, as he’s dubbed the bill that he introduced in the senate, is a response to Sen. Bernie Sanders’ Medicare for All proposal. Bennet, who says he is an advocate of universal health care coverage, believes that Sanders plan is expensive and politically dangerous.
“I think it’d be very challenging to be elected in any state advocating for this plan much less Iowa or Colorado,” Bennet said. “I think my plan is a better plan on the substance, but I think it’s better politics, too.”
According to a July 2019 poll from the Pew Research Center, while 53 percent of Americans believe it is the government’s job to ensure healthcare access to all Americans, they’re more divided on the process of how to do it. Among Democratic voters 44 percent are advocates of a single-payer system while 34 percent would like healthcare to be a mix of private and public programs. Bennet thinks the percentage of swing voters who would endorse a single-payer system without private insurance is even lower.
Most importantly, however, Bennet said that Congress needs to move on from an era of divisive politics. While Bennet thinks he has enough experience in the senate to make him an effective negotiator, he also thinks it’s important to flip Congress and keep it out of the hands of people like McConnell.
“Too many of us are [in the senate] to screw around over this partisan stuff that sort of plays itself out on the cable television at night,” Bennet said. ““If we accept Mitch McConnell’s version of democracy we’re going to have to accept the idea that we’re going to get nothing done.”
