How Deval Patrick drew contrasts with Elizabeth Warren in his first interview as a presidential candidate
"I don’t think wealth is the problem. I think greed is the problem."
Deval Patrick may hail from the same adopted state as Sen. Elizabeth Warren, but he isn’t quite on the same page when it comes to policy.
After officially announcing his candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination Thursday morning, the former Massachusetts governor signaled differences on three of Warren’s core proposals in an interview on “CBS This Morning.”
Patrick’s late entrance into the 2020 race reportedly comes amid his personal doubts that any of the current frontrunners for the Democratic nomination can unite the party’s more moderate and progressive wings in a general election.
“We seem to be migrating to, on the one camp, sort of nostalgia, ‘Let’s just get rid, if you will, of the incumbent president and we can go back to doing what we used to do,'” he said in the CBS interview Thursday, alluding to the thematic appeal of former Vice President Joe Biden’s campaign.
“Or, you know, ‘It’s our way, our big idea, or no way,'” Patrick said, echoing Biden’s recent criticisms of Warren. “And neither of those, it seems to me, seizes the moment to pull the nation together.”
As a political contributor for CBS News this fall, the former governor has reacted underwhelmingly to the candidacy of Biden, whose support Patrick has suggested is “soft” and whose debate performances he expected to be “crisper.”
At the same time, the 63-year-old Bay State Democrat said he wouldn’t go as far to the left as Warren and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders on health care, expressing opposition to the idea of getting rid of private health insurers as part of a Medicare-for-All system. Patrick also called Warren’s recent dodges on Medicare-for-All “enormously frustrating,” even if he agreed that she was right that it would lower overall costs.
Patrick has previously extolled the potential benefits of a single-payer health care system. But when asked Thursday, he said he didn’t support Medicare-for-All “in the terms we’ve been talking about it.”
“I do support a public option, and if Medicare is that public option, I think it’s a great idea,” Patrick said.
Patrick also said he supports efforts to significantly reduce current levels of student debt, but added there are “other strategies” than the most popular proposals. Warren, as well as Sanders, have made massive student loan forgiveness plans central to their campaigns.
“I think there other strategies that we’ve heard about to just that — and we have to do that in order to enable people to reach their potential,” he said.
Additionally, Patrick suggested that he wouldn’t support a wealth tax, which Warren has proposed to pay for her student debt cancellation plan, universal child care, and other government programs. Patrick said a wealth tax “makes a lot of sense directionally,” but said he would propose “a much, much simpler tax system,” eliminating “all or most of the deductions” and increasing rates on “the most prosperous.”
“I don’t think wealth is the problem,” he said. “I think greed is the problem.”
Patrick added that it was time to break the “fever” of trickle-down economics, which he said had resulted in the benefits of the country’s prosperity being “horded” by a small slice of the population.
Despite their policy differences, Patrick told reporters later in the day Thursday that he has “enormous respect” for Warren.
Filing his candidacy papers at the New Hampshire State House, Patrick said he spoke with Warren over the phone Wednesday night and that it was “kind of a hard conversation for both of us, frankly.” Patrick noted that he and his wife, Diane, are friends with the Massachusetts senator and her husband, Bruce.
“She is incredibly thorough in her policy positions, and, frankly, she has the best and most disciplined campaign out there, from what I have observed,” he said, according to CNN.
Asked why that chat was hard, Patrick says “I’m incredibly fond of her and she and Bruce are friends of Diane and mine.”
“She is incredibly thorough in her policy positions and frankly, she has the best and most disciplined campaign out there, from what I have observed.”
— MJ Lee (@mj_lee) November 14, 2019
However, the former governor reportedly added that the “business of advancing an agenda once elected is a different undertaking.”
Patrick says he also talked Wednesday with another close friend: former President Barack Obama, who is remaining neutral in the primary race. Patrick’s record as a pragmatic progressive and aspirational rhetoric often draws comparisons to the former president.
“There is an opportunity right now for big ideas as big as the challenges we face and — in the crafting and development of those ideas — to bring us together,” Patrick told CBS.
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