Now That Biden Is President Elect Will He Keep Progressive Promises?
On Sunday, President-elect Joe Biden‘s deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield said that the former vice president would keep all the promises that he made during the campaign to implement what she characterized as a progressive policy agenda.
During an interview with NBC’s Chuck Todd on “Meet the Press,” Bedingfield responded to comments made by Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who said to The New York Times in a wide-ranging interview that many activist communities who support Democratic candidates often feel left behind when politicians don’t come through and fulfill their promises.
“I think that Vice President Biden campaigned on an incredibly progressive and aggressive agenda,” Bedingfield said on Sunday before pointing to the campaign’s plan to tackle climate change developed with advice from supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential bid, including the New York congresswoman.
“He’s going to make good on those commitments,” she continued. “I mean we, you know, he spent time during this campaign bringing people together around this climate plan. He was able to get the endorsement of groups like the Sunrise Movement and the endorsement of labor for this plan.”
“It’s a big, aggressive plan,” Bedingfield continued. “It’s a perfect example of the kind of, you know, big effort that he is going to make to meet this moment and to meet these crises that we’re in.”
These comments from Biden’s deputy campaign manager are some of the first from the campaign on policy issues following the former vice president being declared the winner of the presidential election Saturday. President Trump and his allies have refused to concede and have vowed legal challenges.
Ocasio-Cortez co-chaired a task force alongside former Secretary of State John Kerry to provide the Biden campaign with recommendations for tackling climate change earlier this year; among other promises, Biden has vowed to rejoin the Paris climate agreement on the first day of his presidency.