Amy Klobuchar thinks her campaign differs from the other two dozen Democrats vying for the 2020 presidential nomination because her proposals have time frames.
“I don’t just have plans, I have deadlines,” the senator for Minnesota told the Washington Post during a live event on Monday.
Democratic presidential candidate Sen. @AmyKlobuchar on what differentiates her 100-day plan from Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s plans: “I don’t just have plans. I have deadlines.” https://t.co/5tFSm0PsKi #postlive pic.twitter.com/zQbGP5ofHk
— Washington Post Live (@postlive) July 22, 2019
Fellow White House hopeful Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren has built momentum in the polls, partially due to a steady stream of policy initiatives, turning the releases into the catchphrase, “I have a plan for that.”
Klobuchar last week outlined her own 100-day strategy should she become her party’s standard-bearer and win the White House next year. On Monday, she compared herself to former President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who she said rolled-out the first 100-day plan in 1933.
“He understood that you need sprints, but you also need marathons,” she said. “I think it gives people hope that you can see some immediate change.”
When pressed Monday on how her centrist positions on policies like healthcare and education differ from those offered by front-runner former Vice President Joe Biden, Klobuchar said her female, Midwest perspective was important to woo voters Democrats failed to turn out during 2016 election cycle. The former prosecutor was also grilled on Biden’s support of the 1994 crime bill, a piece of legislation many critics blame for exacerbating a culture of mass incarceration, and California Sen. Kamala Harris’ own prosecutorial record, which has come under scrutiny for being disproportionately tough on minority groups. For example, Harris backed an initiative that allowed for the pursuit of criminal penalties for parents with habitually late or absent public school children.
“I think it’s something he is explaining and will continue to explain,” Klobuchar said of Biden. “We did use them in some child support cases, but we did not use them in truancy cases,” she added of Harris and her advocacy for criminal repercussions.
Klobuchar on the weekend qualified for the fall Democratic National Committee-sanctioned debates based on polling, but she still needs to meet the 130,000 individual donor-threshold to cement her place on the stage. She will, however, have another opportunity to distinguish herself from her political rivals at next week’s debates in Detroit.
[Also read: Elizabeth Warren predicts economic recession ‘maybe even by the end of 2020’]
