Julián Castro claims he can reassemble Obama’s winning coalition
September 1, 2019Democratic presidential candidate Julián Castro said Sunday he agrees with assertions that any of the 2020 Democratic contenders would be a better fit for the Oval Office than President Donald Trump — whether that’s him or one of his opponents. And he thinks he can oust Trump.
“For Democrats that are out there, what I hear is a lot of anxiety about, hey, 'We need to beat Donald Trump,' and 'How are we going beat Donald Trump?'” the former San Antonio mayor told NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press” Sunday morning.
“Well, if you take a look at the modern era of presidential campaigns, when Democrats have won, it’s because they’ve taken a bit of a risk — whether it was Kennedy in 1960 or Carter in 1976 or Barack Obama in 2008. We need to get people off the sidelines in 2020.”
Specifically, Castro argued that he could “reassemble the Obama coalition and then supercharge that” to win Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — and then snag Florida’s 29 electoral votes, Arizona’s 11 votes and perhaps even Texas’ 38 votes.
Castro also commented on fellow presidential hopeful Joe Biden and what it would mean if the former vice president secured the party's nomination.
“Well, I think that Joe Biden would be a much better president, of course, than Donald Trump,” Castro said. “If I didn’t think that I would be a better president, I wouldn’t be running this race. But I think that he would be a much better president than Donald Trump.
“I also believe that just on issues, Joe Biden and I have some disagreements,” he added. “We talked about our disagreements on immigration on the stage at the last debate. I also believe that he hasn’t gone far enough on health care. We need to base our health care off of the Medicare system and then allow for a private option. So we have real disagreements, but I won’t argue with folks that say that any of the Democrats that are running or will be on the stage in Houston in a few days would be better than Donald Trump.”
Source: https://www.politico.com/