Last night, John Delaney gave his hour-long “America, 2030” presentation for the first time. It gives an overview of an economic-focused agenda for the country, and his platform of his campaign for president.
John Delaney was elected to Congress from Maryland’s 6th district in 2012. In July 2017, he declared his candidacy for president in 2020. He recently completed a 99-county tour of Iowa, headlined at the Iowa Democratic Wing Ding earlier this month, and will speak at the Polk County Steak Fry in September.
“The cost of doing nothing is not nothing”
His talk started with a brief introduction of himself, his background (attending college on an IBEW scholarship, founding two companies), and why he is running for president. The format varied between a traditional political speech and something closer to a TED talk.
The general focus was on the impact of technological change on today’s society. Smart-phones, Twitter, global trade, and soon driverless cars have made massive changes to society and to the types of jobs available. While this is a positive change overall (he describes how globalization has massively decreased poverty), there are still serious problems; most of the benefits of the past 25 years have gone to the top 40% of Americans.
While avoiding social issues (neither abortion nor gun control were mentioned during the presentation at all), Delaney included many progressive priorities in his talk. Solving climate change “is a huge issue, obviously”. Immigration is a key part of the country’s economic strategy; Delaney told the story of his grandfather immigrating to this country.
He talked about education reform in some length. The Committee of Ten standardized today’s high school curriculum in 1892, and it hasn’t changed since then. Delaney wants to modernize that, and guarantee pre-school education for all children.
He also discussed his health-care plan. While he said “we need universal health care”, the details of his program were perhaps less ambitious than other Democrats. He wants to create a new program for people under 65 that will take over for Medicaid, while leaving Medicare largely as-is.
A credible candidate?
John Delaney doesn’t seem likely to catch fire in the Democratic primaries. He’s not going to run on high-profile social issues and repeatedly claims that “partisanship” is a problem. He’s very proudly a capitalist and won’t get the support of vocal Bernie Sanders supporters. In a field that will include multiple women and minorities, he will not be viewed as a “diverse” candidate. He doesn’t have the name-power of Joe Biden, the publicity-power of Michael Avenatti, or the experience as governor that several potential candidates have. He’s not a celebrity like Donald Trump (he joked that one of the advantages of getting elected would be being able to meet Bruce Springsteen, who he’s seen in-concert dozens of times).
He does have a ludicrous head-start in Iowa compared to other candidates, but that is only one of the 50 states participating in the Democratic primary process. Whether his time on the ground will get him enough support to be on the main debate stage is yet to be seen.