A month ago, former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick told reporters that he didn’t know how he’d break through such a crowded Democratic field of presidential candidates without being a celebrity.
On Thursday, after announcing that he’d file paperwork to get on the ballot in the New Hampshire primary, the 63-year-old Patrick said you’ll never know whether you can break through “unless you get out there and try.”
In his first interview after announcing his entry into the 2020 race for the White House, Patrick told CBS This Morning on Thursday that he’s been “waiting for a moment like this” his entire life.
“The appetite for big ideas is big enough for the size of the challenges we face in America,” he said. “And the anger and anxiety that I hear about and see and witness in all kinds of corners of the country today is familiar ... for the same reasons having grown up on south side of Chicago. The economy gets up and kicks you to the curb."
Some have questioned whether he’s entering the race too late, with a big fundraising hill to climb and lots of supporters and friends already backing other candidates, including Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
But Patrick, the first black governor of Massachusetts, channelled his friend and ally former President Barack Obama, saying what separated him from other candidates was that he could unify not only the Democratic party but Americans from many walks of life. The Boston Globe first reported that Patrick spoke with Obama on Wednesday. With a smile, Patrick declined to share details of the conversation with CBS anchors on Thursday, but said the former president shares some of the “same concerns" as him.
“We need to reach for the best of America, not just the best of our party and not just the best of our supporters, but the best of America,” he said. “That’s going to come from a whole lot of people who’ve checked out and felt left out and left back.”
He described the field of more than a dozen Democratic candidates talented and hardworking, calling many of them “personal friends.”
“But on one camp we have nostalgia, get rid of incumbent and do what we used to do ... or it’s ‘our way, our big ideas, or no way.’ Neither of those seizes the moment to pull the nation together," he said.
Patrick’s announcement comes after Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former mayor of New York City, filed paperwork to appear on Alabama’s ballot. Bloomberg and some Democrats have expressed uncertainty about former Vice President Joe Biden as a frontrunner, while some fear the other leading candidates, Warren and Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, might be too liberal to oust President Donald Trump.
Earlier this week, the last Democratic nominee for president, Hillary Clinton, told BBC she had not ruled out a run and that she was under “enormous pressure” to join the fray.
“Never say never,” she said, noting she often thinks about what would have happened had she beaten Trump in 2016.
Patrick sought to distance himself from the aggressive policy plans, largely paid for by taxes on the ultra wealthy, proposed by his more liberal opponents.
He told CBS he was not in favor of Medicare for All, which has been pushed by Sanders and Warren, but he does back “a public option” for health care.
He supports helping students eliminating student debt but said “there are other strategies to do just that. We have to do that in order to have people reach their potential.”
He said taxes “should go up on the most prosperous, not as a penalty but because we all have a stake ... in building our future.”
But he advocated a “much simpler tax system for everyone,” eliminating most deductions and “getting the rates right” versus implementing a “wealth tax" called for by Sanders and Warren.
“Greed is the problem,” Patrick said, arguing the country should encourage prosperity to help individuals and families lift themselves "out of poverty, into the middle class and beyond. But we have crowded and hoarded all the benefits of our prosperity in the very few. This is what trickle down economics looks like. We have to break that fever and get it right.”
Patrick will no longer be a CBS contributor, he and the network said Thursday.
Over two terms as the Massachusetts governor, Patrick oversaw the state’s implementation of health care reform, significant raises in the minimum wage and an 1.25% increase in state sales tax. Patrick then joined Bain Capital, the investment firm founded by his gubernatorial predecessor Mitt Romney. The Globe reported that Patrick had resigned from Bain Capital, effective Wednesday.
He told the Globe that he’d wanted to run since last year but cited a “cruel” election process and noted in an interview with WBUR that his wife, Diane, had been diagnosed with cancer. But she is now cancer-free, the Globe reported.