The wonder isn’t that Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is doing so well against Hillary Clinton in Iowa and New Hampshire. It’s that he isn’t blowing her out of the water everywhere.
That’s because Sanders epitomizes the “new Democratic Party”—that is, the party that embraces all things left.
Health care reform. The most recent brouhaha between Sanders and Clinton was over Sanders’ support for a single-payer health care system—essentially expanding Medicare to cover everyone, including illegal immigrants.
Clinton claims she wants to double down on Obamacare, presumably so she doesn’t alienate herself from the president.
But everyone knows that leading Democrats, including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Elizabeth Warren, and President Obama, are all on record favoring a single-payer system. Moreover, a December Kaiser Family Foundation pollfound that 81 percent of Democrats favor a Medicare-for-all system.
Thus, Clinton is defending Obama’s widely unpopular health care law, while Sanders wants to expand the most widely supported, albeit financially unsustainable, health insurance plan in the country—which is exactly what a large majority of Democrats want.
Wall Street bashing. Clinton has taken to bashing Wall Street, which is ludicrous because Hillary Clinton is Wall Street.
She was a senator from New York, where she and Bill regularly wined and dined Wall Streeters, many of whom are lefties. Goldman Sachs paid her $675,000 for speeches, part of $2.9 million she’s received from various banks and financial institutions. Oh, and the Clinton Global Initiative’s offices are about four miles from Wall Street.
The Democratic Party, by contrast, has soured on big financial institutions, part of a newfound contempt for big banks and the wealthy people who run them. But Democrats are late to this bash-the-banks effort; Sanders has been doing that for decades.
Tax the rich. Democrats have long favored taxing the rich, but only in the last decade or so has the Democratic Party come to believe this is the solution to all fiscal problems.
For example, Bill Clinton raised the top two income tax brackets, but only to 36 percent and 39.6 percent. He removed the income cap on the 2.9 percent Medicare payroll tax and raised the income limit for the Social Security tax. These were bad reforms, but at least they were only moderate tax increases. Sanders would like to go much higher—and so would today’s Democratic Party.
Big government defenders. Democrats increasingly believe that big government can solve all our problems, and Sanders has led that charge for years.
Last month, Gallup released a poll showing that 88 percent of Republicans believe “big government” is the biggest threat facing the U.S. For Democrats, it was 53 percent, but that was up from only 32 percent when Obama took office. Apparently, Democrats aren’t worried about big government, just big government run by Obama.
Democrats are looking for someone who will restore their faith in the federal bureaucracy, and for that Sanders is their guru.
Anti-business fervor. If you want to blame business for all of the country’s real and perceived ills—racism, sexism, poverty, exploitation, etc.—Sanders is your man.
Clinton tries to sound like she would be tough on business, which is what Democrats want to hear these days. But she and Bill are joined at the hip with lots of big businesses—especially foreign corporations and crony capitalists seeking government favors and handouts.
Neutered foreign policy. Democrats reacted negatively to President George W. Bush’s expansionist foreign policy—and even Obama’s less aggressive efforts—by advocating a lesser role for America in the world. Sanders lines up with that point of view. Clinton, on the other hand, was in charge of Obama’s failed foreign policy.
And so Clinton is struggling to become the head of a political party that has moved to her left. She’s tried to minimize those differences by moving to the left herself on some issues, but she isn’t believable.
The Democratic Party of 2016 is much more aligned with Sanders than Clinton. I may disagree with just about everything Sanders wants to do, but he’s a principled and consistent liberal politician.
Since Democrats believe that most of the country is with them, the most honest thing they can do is vote their convictions and give Sanders the nomination.