Whether we like it or not, the 2020 campaign is upon us. I told myself that I was going to wait to fall in love with a candidate this season - after all we're still 600+ days away from the election and a year before any primary votes are counted. But last week I saw clips from Elizabeth Warren's trip to Iowa and was really impressed with the ease of her interactions with the voters at one of her forums.
Yesterday, I happened to watch Julian Castro's campaign kickoff event live from San Antonio. WOW. The entire event was broadcast on C-SPAN (shout out to government supported programming!) and the rally was strong. I find his platform to be appealing from the progressive view - a Green New Deal, Medicare for All, universal pre-K and affordable college education, no PAC campaign contributions - without being open to the harshest of criticism from the center.
I listened again to his speech this morning and I am still wowed by what he said. Watching the video, I noticed that he has some of the mannerisms of President Obama, especially in some of his speech patterns and it makes me wonder if he has enlisted some of the Obama folks on his campaign. His speech writer is fantastic. I thought out loud if perhaps Castro was aiming to be Obama2.0 and SK commented that he was more ballsy than Obama on the policy proposal front, but delivers in a way that doesn't come off as threatening the way some folks felt about President Obama.
I don't have a candidate yet, but Castro is a strong front runner out of the gate.
See his full speech below.
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