Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bennet may not be the obvious choice to many for the party’s nomination for the presidency in 2020. The two term senator for Colorado, however, believes that in a crowded primary, he has one thing none of his opponents do: the experience of consistently winning in a solidly purple state.

Bennet won his senate seat on the front lines of the Tea Party’s hostile takeover of Congress in 2010. In his first statewide campaign, he ran against conservative firebrand Ken Buck, and won a race during a midterm that saw the Democrats lose seven seats in the senate and their majority in the house.

Experiences like that, and witnessing first-hand the political close quarters combat waged by senate Republicans during his tenure in Congress are why Bennet believes his brand of "pragmatic liberalism" is what will be needed to implement a liberal agenda nationally.

“We have been tyrannized by the Freedom Caucus and Mitch McConnell for the past ten years. Our exercise in self-government has been utterly immobilized by them for their own ideological reasons, and I don’t think there’s any way through that but by beating him or overcoming him,” Bennet said in an interview with WGBH News. “I’ve won two tough national races in a truly purple state in the middle of the country. No one else can say that, and that’s what we’re going to do to beat Donald Trump.”

One area that Bennet has staked his ground on is healthcare. Having just gone through treatment for prostate cancer, Bennet said that he’s concerned so many of his colleagues have joined with Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in calling for the abolition of private insurance.

“Running on a plan that takes Medicare Advantage away from 20 million Americans, running on a plan that takes the healthcare plans away from every single union member in America that’s negotiated for their healthcare plan just to me is not a plausible way of unifying Democrats,” Bennet said.

Unlike some of his detractors, Bennet does not find himself to be in contrast with Sanders. Rather, he says that the two share the same goal — universal health care coverage. They just dispute the best means to go about it.

Bennet’s own answer to rising health care costs is a bill he recently introduced called Medicare X. Unlike Medicare for All, Medicare X would preserve the private health insurance marketplace, but call for the creation of a new public insurance plan, similar to Medicare, consumers can buy into.

“We need universal health care coverage in this country. I deeply believe that. I believe that because there are millions of people in our country that don’t have health insurance and need it,” Bennet said. “I think it’s not necessary to create this upheaval that would be caused by nationalizing our healthcare system.”

Bennet’s belief is that Medicare X will be a more appetizing option, particularly to people in crucial states that could both impact the presidential election and alter the makeup of Congress.

“We need Colorado, we need Arizona, we need North Carolina, we need Maine,” Bennet said. “I would never want us to be as malevolent or cynical as [Mitch McConnell] is, but I do think we need to be as strategic as he is, and when you look at something like Medicare for All, to me, that’s non-strategic.”

Bennet’s positioning on the issue has drawn ire from progressives. Progressive writer Miles Howard said that while some progressives within Massachusetts may be drawn to Bennet’s pragmatism, many will find the senator’s approach to healthcare incremental and off-putting.

“Bennet has been especially combative toward Medicare For All proponents (kind of like Joe Biden) and his alternative Medicare X proposal is really just a public option that would be introduced to the private insurance landscape — a landscape in which millions of us will continue to get financially skinned alive,” Howard wrote in an email. “On this and other issues, it's almost as though Bennet is saying, ‘Do you really want change?’"

Others, however, argue that Bennet’s healthcare plan will be enticing, especially to labor unions, who still have a strong influence on politics in the Bay State.

“Bennet is no doubt one of the smartest people in this race, or in any room, and so his voice is an important one,” said Steve Kerrigan, the former CEO of the Democratic National Convention and the 2014 Democratic nominee for lieutenant governor in Massachusetts. “Allowing people, like union members, to keep their employee based health care and others to opt in to Medicare makes a lot of sense to me and will make sense to a lot of Democratic and independent voters.”

Bennet’s approach to healthcare is emblematic of his approach to immigration and education — two issues he’s worked on throughout his career. In 2013, he was instrumental in crafting the first legislation that created a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, but in exchange for more border patrol agents and border security. As superintendent in Denver, he prioritized working with non-charter schools, but supported and helped replicate the models of charter schools that were successful.

Bennet’s path to the nomination is still a long shot. The latest poll from the Economist and YouGov had the senator polling at one percent, which is below the threshold needed in four accepted polls to qualify for the third round of debates in September.

That being said, political strategists like Celinda Lake and former Massachusetts Rep. Chet Atkins believe that Bennet’s stances on the issues can find him success on the campaign trail, especially if Biden drops out.

“I think Michael Bennet will be a very attractive candidate in Massachusetts,” said Atkins, who is also a partner at the Boston-based Tremont Strategies Group. “He’s had extraordinary accomplishments in his life in a variety of areas from being highly successful in finance to turning around an urban school system.”

Bennet’s biggest obstacle, aside from name recognition, however, will most likely not be from establishment Democrats, but the emerging group of left-leaning voters that are dominating the party’s base.

“Most progressives agree that America is entering an inflection point, where anything could happen, and that transformational politics should be embraced,” Howard said. “Michael Bennet is the antithesis of a transformational politician.”

Bennet, however, sees it differently. While he may not calling for an ideological paradigm shift, Bennet does believe that new leadership is needed to remedy the three issues he said are at the root of the government’s decline: money in politics, political gerrymandering and a combative Republican Party willing to go to extreme lengths to impose their will.

“We can be depressed about it, and I am depressed about it sometimes, but what we really need to do is view it as an opportunity just like Americans generations before have viewed these moments as opportunities to overcome,” Bennet said. “We have been here before. We have overcome these kinds of forces that want to drag our country backwards before and that’s what this generation is going to have to do now.”