“We will have a cohort of progressives that are very clear about their objectives,” said Ilhan Omar.
By Josh Plank, World Israel News
If Joe Biden is elected president, a “cohort of progressives” will force him to implement far-left policies, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) told Axios in an interview which aired Monday on HBO.
“A president is only as successful as his collaboration is with Congress,” Omar said.
“And we will have a cohort of progressives that are very clear about their objectives for wanting the implementation of Medicare for All and a Green New Deal and raising the minimum wage and not allowing for fracking,” she said.
Though Biden is generally viewed as a moderate, Omar said that he showed a “level of responsiveness” to more progressive policies.
“I know that when the policy platform was being put into place, a lot of our feedback was incorporated throughout his platform,” Omar said.
“We know that that responsiveness is a signal for us to do what we know how to do best as progressives, which is to push and to mobilize our base trying to accomplish these policy objectives,” she said.
Omar’s comments seem to support an accusation by the Trump campaign that Biden is a “Trojan horse for the radical left,” an accusation that Omar did not deny.
Axios‘ Alexi McCammond asked Omar, “One attack line that Republicans, including the president and the vice-president, have consistently used is that Biden is ‘a Trojan horse of the radical left,’ and that progressive leaders will actually be calling the shots. What do you think when you hear them say that?”
Omar said, “I know that for them we’ve become sort of the boogeyman of the election.”
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), who was endorsed by Omar, told PBS Firing Line last month that a task force from his campaign was involved with developing Biden’s policy platform.
“What we hammered out was a series of programs on the major issues facing this country, which if implemented — and I will do my best to make sure they are implemented — would in fact make Biden perhaps the most progressive president since FDR,” Sanders said.