Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is taking a victory lap for Joe Biden’s election with an op-ed in USA Today:
am very proud of the hard work that the progressive community put into electing Joe Biden as our next president.
And let’s be clear: This election was not just a normal election between two candidates. It was much more important than that. It was an election about retaining our democracy, preserving the rule of law, believing in science and ending pathological lying in the White House. And with a record-breaking turnout, the American people voted to reject President Donald Trump’s racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, religious bigotry and authoritarianism. That is very good news.
Even so, truth be told, the election results in the House and Senate were disappointing. Despite Joe Biden winning the popular vote by more than 5 million votes, the Democrats lost seats in the House and, so far, have only picked up one seat in the Senate.
Now, with the blame game erupting, corporate Democrats are attacking so-called far-left policies like Medicare for All and the Green New Deal for election defeats in the House and the Senate. They are dead wrong.
Here are the facts:
â–º112 co-sponsors of Medicare for All were on the ballot in November. All 112 of them won their races.
â–º98 co-sponsors of the Green New Deal were on the ballot in November. Only one of them have lost an election.
I think he completely misreads the election and rather clearly fails to understand how our gerrymandered Congressional districts work. I’ll try to explain.
The way redistricting is done in nearly every state serves to protect incumbents by concentrating minorities together in districts. The majority party concentrates members of the minority party into as few districts as they can, creating “safe” seats both for themselves and for the minority party. But it doesn’t stop there. Regular party members concentrate members of minority factions within their own party into districts, too. To paraphrase Speaker Pelosi’s comment, anybody with a “D” after their name would have won in those districts. The evidence he produces proves nothing.
As I have said before I think this election was a fairly narrow rejection of Trump not a rejection of all Republicans and certainly no embrace of democratic socialism. Could the Democrats have fared better by running more moderate candidates or using a different campaign strategy than they did? I have no idea. Rather than “damn the torpedos; full speed ahead” my advice would be to count your blessings.
I wonder how Bernie’s numbers compare with Republican commitment to repeal Obamacare? Over 240 Republicans voted to repeal it from time to time, a few Democrats as well.
Moderate Democrats did not run on Medicare for All because its not a moderate position; they ran on some form of public option. And in doing so, they distinguished their position from Medicare for All.
A better example — I live in few blocks from a competitive / ugly Congressional race in which the Republican won again in a district that was gerrymandered to be about +2 D. This year in the Democratic primary, the Medicare for All candidate explain at a public forum that “Anything less than single payer is eugenics.” Democrats voted three-to-one for the candidate that supported a public option.
Bernie’s numbers have a survival bias issue.
Agree. Bernie is trying to grab credit when he should be receiving some blame. 20%-30% of Democrats support his ideas. They are vocal and the kind who go to rallies, but they are still a minority.
Steve
How do you arrive at that figure? I’m not disputing it; just curious how you get there. Pew Research says that just about 50% of Democrats are progressives, a bit higher than when Obama took office. Are you assuming that half of those who consider themselves progressives agree with Sanders?
I think that, strangely, more Democratic officeholders agree with Sanders than rank and file Democrats. My evidence for that is the large number of those running for president who raised their hands when asked if they supported “Medicare For All”.
“My evidence for that is the large number of those running for president who raised their hands when asked if they supported “Medicare For Allâ€.
In the primary you run as far to the extremes as you can. I dont find your example especially enlightening. Bernie is the most extreme of the progressives. Even a lot of them find him a bit too much.
Steve
Like a lot of things, many people like the idea of “Medicare for all” until they learn how it will be funded. It’s the political reason why Progressives, especially, claim everything they want to do can be funded on the backs of the super-rich.
The GoP has a similar problem – they agree on repealing Obamacare but the sine qua non for replacing it doesn’t exist in their narrow political worldview.
One of the many problems with Republicans’ approach to health care is that defining “market” in a way that doesn’t actually produce a market doesn’t accomplish anything. I think the reality is that rather few people actually want a free market in health care. We had one a little over a century ago. It didn’t work out so well.
If the GoP could figure out a way to make a tax cut pay for M4A, that would be a winning combo for them.