U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet said there has been a “catastrophic failure of leadership in the Democratic Party” and he said that failure led to the reelection of President Donald Trump and Republicans’ control of Congress.
“I am not one of these people who believes that Trump is the cause of all of our problems,” Bennet said Friday. “I blame him for many, many things, but getting elected is not one of those things. I think his election is a symptom of the problems that our country faces, and we just can’t mail this in anymore. We have to make change.”
Bennet made the comments during a conversation with Colorado Sun Publisher Larry Ryckman at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin, Texas. Bennet also discussed his gubernatorial campaign platform and what prompted him to run for governor in the first place.
Here are the highlights from the interview:
Decision to run for governor
Bennet said he had never considered running for governor until “some people” came to him and urged him to run. He didn’t say who those people were, only that they were Coloradans.
“I’m not saying that there was some massive groundswell of people coming, saying, ‘run for governor,’” Bennet recounted. “But there were a handful of people that came and said, ‘we think you should run for governor.’”
One of Bennet’s closest family members, however, didn’t think it was a good idea.
“My mother, by the way, did not want me to run for governor,” he said. “She likes watching me rip Bobby Kennedy’s face off on the cable television.”
Bennet said he ultimately reached the decision to run for governor because he said he thinks “we need people in these jobs that are going to push the envelope and actually deliver results for the American people” on affordability. He thinks his experience in the private sector and as superintendent of Denver Public Schools gives him a unique perspective that would help him lead the state and make change.
Bennet said Democratic governors, like Gavin Newsom in California and JB Pritzker in Illinois, are on the “front lines” of the fight against the Trump administration, while many Democratic elected officials in Washington, D.C., have not come to terms with how the party lost to Trump a second time.
Bennet faces Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser in the Democratic gubernatorial primary. Whoever wins the primary will likely win the general election, too.
The senator has said he will pick his Senate replacement should he win the governor’s race. He pitched his intention as a good succession plan.
“Maybe a succession plan for the Senate, that’s not my just dying on the floor of the U.S. Senate, which kind of was my mom’s plan, isn’t a bad thing,” Bennet said. “We have an amazing abundance of talent in our state, and I think we’re going to be very well served by whoever the next senator is.”
Health care
Bennet, who campaigned on a public health insurance option during his 2020 presidential bid, reiterated his support for what he calls “universal health care.”
“I believe very strongly that we should have universal health care in this country, and I think that is what the Democratic Party should be fighting for at this point,” he said.
But, he said, Colorado can’t create a universal health care system of its own because the state is tied to national insurance structures.
He would like to see the state do a “much better job” of creating what he called a system of “managed care that allows people to have the ability to take care of themselves better.” That would include more focus on primary care to prevent emergency room visits and more transparency in how money in health care money is spent.
Child care
Bennet said he believes that child care should be free for all families in Colorado, but “it’s going to take a long time, step by step, for us to get to a point where we can do that.”
This month, New Mexico became the first state to offer free child care for all families.
On taxes
Bennet said he supports an inheritance tax that “ensures that there is not a permanent aristocracy in the United States, or at least that makes it harder for one to develop.”
He called out Facebook founder and billionaire Mark Zuckerberg.
“I deeply resent the fact that we have never had a negotiation with Mark Zuckerberg over our privacy or our data, or our kids’ mental health or our economics,” he said. “These guys have just taken, they’ve taken and they’ve taken.”
Other highlights
Bennet said he supports banning cellphones in schools as a way to better protect children from the harms of social media. He also endorsed Denver Mayor Mike Johnston’s job performance, particularly when it comes to people who are homeless.
“I actually think Mike has done a good job (on homelessness),” Bennet said. “What I hear from most small businesses in Denver is that there they wish that more people were getting the word that things have gotten better.”
On why affordability is a problem for Coloradans despite years of Democratic control, Bennet said, “I think because we’ve been coloring inside the lines, I think because we have not built the kind of political coalition that needs to be built to do hard things, not easy things.”
Regarding his short-lived and ultimately failed 2020 presidential bid, Bennet said he would run again if given the chance to go back in time and redo his campaign.
Bennet said he was a terrible candidate at the outset because he had a “terrible case of imposter syndrome.”
“What I came to realize during the course of the campaign is that there’s only one thing that qualifies you, really, to be president and that’s being elected president,” Bennet said.