Biden campaign manager says he’ll ‘make good’ on ‘progressive agenda’

Kate Bedingfield assured worried, more-leftist Democrats that President-elect Joe Biden will 'meet this moment.'

Nov 9, 2020

President-elect Joe Biden has a lot of people, progressive and otherwise, to thank for his historic victory in Tuesday’s 2020 presidential election.

Biden for President Deputy Campaign Manager Kate Bedingfield, who was also the campaign’s communications director, responded to remarks made by New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who did an interview with The New York Times in which she expressed concern about a Biden presidency, addressing progressives’ issues.

President-elect Joe Biden waves to the crowd after his address to the nation Saturday from the Chase Center in Wilmington, Delaware. (Photo by Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images)

In an interview Sunday on Meet the Press, Bedingfield assured that the progressive agenda would have a place in the Biden administration.

“I think that Vice President Biden campaigned on an incredibly progressive and aggressive agenda,” she said as she addressed issues like climate change. “He’s going to make good on those commitments.”

WATCH: @KBeds says Joe Biden will "lay out that people that he believes are best to serve our country" in cabinet roles to the Senate. #MTP

"He is going to make his case and work to get them through if it is a Republican Senate, which we don't know yet if it will be." pic.twitter.com/pzRp34DQLW
— Meet the Press (@MeetThePress) November 8, 2020

“It’s a big, aggressive plan,” Bedingfield said. “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.”

In a broad interview with The New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez expressed concern about her party and the expectation of whether the Biden administration will support the agenda of the far-left.

“I don’t know how open they’ll be,” she said. “And it’s not a personal thing. It’s just, the history of the party tends to be that we get really excited about the grassroots to get elected. And then those communities are promptly abandoned right after an election.”

A significant part of Ocasio-Cortez’s interview was dedicated to the Movement for Black Lives, which was a major issue for progressive candidates and the electorate after protests erupted across the country this summer.

“We know that race is a problem, and avoiding it is not going to solve any electoral issues,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “We have to actively disarm the potent influence of racism at the polls.”

She also expressed concern that while Biden has won the presidency, there are the midterm elections to consider in 2022. Progressive voters could be key in continuing Democratic momentum.

“It’s really hard for us to turn out non-voters when they feel like nothing changes for them,” she said. “When they feel like people don’t see them or even acknowledge their turnout.”

Ocasio-Cortez even maintained that she was initially unsure if she was going to seek office again in 2020, citing the lack of support in the Democratic Party. However, she said, she “chose to run for re-election because I felt like I had to prove that this is real. That this movement was real. That I wasn’t a fluke. That people really want guaranteed health care and that people really want the Democratic Party to fight for them.”

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