Heh. I was going to post this in the Bernie Sanders thread, although that wasn’t the tack I was going to take.
First, let me commend Sanders for doing a great interview where he answered questions rather than dodging them, and in most cases, gave a lot of thought to the answers, as well as being willing to admit the gaps in his knowledge. His honesty and straightforwardness is something that should be expected of all candidates. We’ll never have real change if we keep supporting candidates who dissemble, dodge, and outright lie because we think they are more electable or might be better at “getting things done”.
The criticism of Sanders that I have here is twofold: First, there seem to be gaps in his knowledge that he doesn’t know about. He lauds Scandinavian countries and says he studies their ways, but on health care he doesn’t want to do it their way. Is it because he thinks a British/Canadian-type model is superior to what they do, or does he just assume that UHC=single payer without thinking much further about it? And what’s with him not wanting any private insurance companies? All UHC countries in the democracies have private supplemental insurance at least, with many allowing private insurance to directly compete with the national system. Plus, some of those systems are decentralized, or the equivalent of state responsibility rather than federal. Does Sanders support a UHC system where the states decide how to do it with the federal government setting minimum standards? No, he supports Medicare-for-all. But does any other country do it that way?
The other criticism was his refusal to acknowledge tradeoffs. Ezra Klein has made his name analyzing policy options and taking a hard look at the pros and cons and possible unintended consequences of various policy options. Sanders seriously said that we can take our jobs back from China and yet Chinese workers wouldn’t be harmed by that. Ezra tried to cut in but was unsuccessful. Free trade can be positive sum. Protectionism is always, always zero sum. If we stop normal trade relations with China, China will become much, much poorer. Sanders needs to be an adult and acknowledge that.
Now, on to his immigration stance. Very interesting. He said that open borders is a “Koch idea”, and said that mass low wage immigration makes Americans poorer. That’s actually a heterodox view in mainstream liberalism today. I doubt immigration is a high priority issue among Sanders’ mostly white progressive supporters anyway, but this won’t help him with Latinos, who have mainstream Democrats making all kinds of promises to them. This is an issue where Sanders does understand and acknowledge the tradeoffs, so good for him.