One House Republican thinks former Vice President Joe Biden has what it takes to defeat President Trump in 2020.
“Yeah, I think so, because he’s kind of run as a centrist,” Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., told CNN Sunday when asked whether Biden could beat Trump.
“I think he can attract the kind of people that are voting for Donald Trump, the middle class, the blue-collar workers. I think he’s the one that can take that away,” Kinzinger said. “If you put somebody like Bernie Sanders up, it’s just out of the stream of what people want. We’re not a liberal country, I would say that we’re probably a moderate country.”
[Read more: 2020: Trump 7-5 fave to win re-election, Biden soaring, Warren dropping]
But Kinzinger, who was re-elected for a fifth term in November, believes Democrats will instead choose a “far left” candidate to contest the 2020 presidential election against the incumbent.
“Right now, you see even the leadership of Nancy Pelosi, they’re begging for their far left, they’re turning to the far left. It’s not going to be a centrist party,” he said. “If it was a centrist party, I think they would put up somebody like Joe Biden, and unlike Sen. [Rick] Santorum, I actually think Biden would be a really tough candidate.”
Santorum, a former Republican senator from Pennsylvania, told CNN Sunday during the same panel that Democrats triumph when they nominate “someone unexpected or someone who is not the favorite.”
“So I’m hoping for Bernie, or Elizabeth, or somebody like that, someone tired, old — Joe Biden. Put them out there, we’ll win,” he said.
