Bernie Sanders Best Candidate to Defeat Trump
by John Lawrence, February 16, 2020
There is a tug of war going on between Bernie and the so-called moderates. What the pundits don't understand is that the swing voters in the coming election don't just want somebody that can beat Trump. They want something different. That's why they voted for Trump in the first place. If the Democrats offer up a moderate, unexciting candidate, Trump will be reelected. Trump was a wild card; that's why people voted for him. They are still in the same mood. They want something different - not a party line Democrat.
Sure Trump has a base; the Democrats have a base, but this next election will be about who has the best ideas, not just turning out the base. Ideas are exciting especially when there are as many things that need to be dealt with as this country has. Certain issues have reached crisis proportions, namely, global warming, infrastructure, unending wars and health care. What young and swing voters don't want is a moderate of either party, and they will embrace a radical of either party. Those who voted for Trump in 2016 will turn around and vote for Bernie in 2020. By now Trump has pretty much worn out his welcome among a lot of people.
David Lazarus of the LA Times says that Bernie has done a lousy job of selling Medicare for All. He says $32 trillion for Medicare for All is a bargain.
[Democrats are] adept at highlighting the myriad problems with our healthcare system — the high costs, the millions uninsured, the financial devastation of getting sick.
But when it comes to solutions, most of the Democratic presidential candidates offer vague policy proposals and sidestep pointed questions about how much healthcare reform would cost.
This is simply foolish. On both counts — policy and price — the Dems have a winning political issue. ...
Gerald Kominski, a professor of health policy and management at UCLA, tells me the problem with communicating these ideas is that the scope of the problem is so large, and the underlying components so complex, many people can’t get their heads around such difficult policy matters.
“This easily slips into Nerd Land,” he said.
But once you clear away all the policy brush, Kominski observed, there’s a fairly simple message to be conveyed about Medicare for all or any other single-payer system.
“Most families would be better off,” he said.
There it is.
Yes, this is all very complicated. And, yes, there would be nothing easy about transforming the U.S. healthcare system into one more in line with our economic peers.
But let’s emphasize Kominski’s point: Most families would be better off.
That’s the case Democrats should be making, again and again, to the American people.
So what's so complicated about that? That's what a great communicator has to do. Make the case in the simplest terms. Bernie has made the case that there would be no premiums, no deductibles and no co-pays. He just needs to emphasize that the cost per person would be half of what it is now in line with costs per person in other advanced countries, and that there would be a sliding scale tax wise so that the rich would pay proportionately more while the middle class would pay proportionately less and the poor would pay nothing at all.
So rather than letting other candidates attack by mentioning an astronomical cost for Bernie's plan, he has to come back at them with the facts that for most people the cost would be less. He and Elizabeth Warren have to double down on the wealth tax and making corporations and the wealthy pay their fair share of taxes instead of getting tax subsidies.
Republicans will go nuts over Bernie being a "socialist", but most young people don't care about that label any more. They care about tangible things like free college tuition and the forgiveness of student loan debt which affects even people in their 60s.
Young people also don't want to inherit a dying planet. Better to siphon off the wealth of those who won't be around to see it and, therefore, don't care if the planet dies after they're gone. They will be like the rats leaving the sinking ship leaving the young to go down with it. But the young who will suffer sure do care about the planetary crisis that will be handed to them by their elders, and they will vote accordingly.
