If you are explaining you are losing. The problem is that there are a whole bunch of low-information voters who won’t be listening to Bernie’s explanations of what he really means by socialism. They dislike socialism and they will be pounded by ads calling Bernie a scary socialist. And the label is not the only problem. While some of Bernie’s policies are popular, abolishing private health insurance is not and that will be a huge and concrete policy which Bernie will struggle to explain his way out of even if voters are paying attention.
56% of Americans support abolishing private insurance companies. Actually, as the link will show, the public are rather confused on this issue and the numbers swing wildly depending on how you phrase the question. But it’s certainly not true to say that this policy is highly unpopular.
From your source:
You can bet that voters will be pounded with ads saying that they will not be able to keep their current health insurance under Bernie’s plan.
And if the question makes clear that Medicare for all will replace private health insurance, it is not popular.
For example with this question:“Do you think Medicare for all, that is a national health insurance program for all Americans that replaces private health insurance, is a good idea or a bad idea?” the response was 41-54.
But a majority also want a system under which they won’t have to pay any premiums or copays!
Clearly the public is confused about this issue. Leadership is about framing the issue in a way that voters can understand, not changing your principles in response to every shift in the polls.
It may be true that gradual reform of the ACA would be more popular in this election. But what will we say a few years down the line, when it becomes clear that those measures are failing to contain spiraling health care costs, as any plan which doesn’t take profit and bloated administrative costs out of the equation must inevitably do? The way to achieve lasting political realignment is to do things that actually make people’s lives better.
Well obviously voters would like to keep their private health insurance and not have to pay premiums. As usual they want to have their cake and eat it too. But that doesn’t mean they will accept a plan where their private health insurance is taken away from them.
As for health care costs their growth has been slowingdown in recent years possibly because of the ACA. There are many ideas for slowing down health care costs without going single payer and there will be huge political constraints on cutting costs even under single-payer.
In any event single-payer will be a complete non-starter in Congress even if Bernie wins. Basically it’s all downside without upside. The downside is that it will cost Bernie the election and elect Trump. The upside is that Bernie wins despite single-payer and it then dies in Congress.
In fact, he did release blood chemistry results:
None of the people claiming Bernie hasn’t released his records have said exactly what vital information they feel is missing.
As a conservative, Yang’s socialist policies worry me more than Sanders’. TBH though, if you’re pushing for universal base income and the like I’m already thinking socialist. Admitting it doesn’t make me like them any less.
If Sanders loses the general election, it will likely be from him having stupidly and incorrectly labeled himself a socialist. Trump and Parscale will exploit that to the hilt. I’m waiting for the attack ads about Sanders taking his honeymoon in the Soviet Union. Progressives just have no ability to play politics, which is a damn shame because I mostly agree with their policies.
I agree that this is baked in for Trump but I don’t think that it is yet baked in for Sanders. What is clear from the flatness of Trumps approval numbers is that everyone has pretty much made up their mind what they feel about Trump. some 40-45% of the population will approve of him come election day, some 50-55% will disapprove. Those who do approve have done so for idioloigcal reasons in spite of ample evidence of Trumps malfeasance, and new evidence are not going to change their minds, nor is there going to be any other candidate on the Democratic side who they approve of more. So those votes are simply locked in for Trump.
The problem is that the 50-55% who disapprove are not so locked in against Trump. Some like me are locked in and will vote for any candidate so long as they aren’t Trump, but for many, they may disapprove of Trump but depending on who runs against him, they may disapprove of that new candidate as much or more, at which point they will either stay home or hold their nose and vote for whomever they think is the lesser of two evils. These are the voters we need to be concerned about. They are also likely to be the voters who are the least informed about the candidates and most likely to be influenced by political advertising, and in particular the voters who are least informed about what Democratic socialism actually means.
When the topic of socialism comes up there will be two narratives. One will try to explain that Democratic Socialism involves government influencing a market economy for the betterment of society, and so is distinguished from the communism in which the government actually controls the means of production, and so … The other will simply show video footage of Venezuela, and ask whether you would you would prefer that to the roaring economy we have under the Trump administration. Can you guess which narrative is going to be most convincing to those who paid more attention to the dispute between Cara Delevingne and Justin Beeber than to the impeachment hearings?
Same with Sanders contacts with Castro. The Trump Putin connection is already out in the open and highly publicized for any who would hear it, but the Sanders Castro connection may be news to some of that 50-55% who don’t like Trump, and some of those may go from Trump is bad, to both are bad, and I might as well go for the devil I know.
I think these are all reasonable potential concerns and worries, I just see the potential concerns and worries for all the other Democratic candidates as more significant. Firstly, none of them seem to have the high level of enthusiasm and excitement that Bernie does, and one of my strongest beliefs for this election is that we’ll need enthusiasm and excitement to have the best chance to win.
I would, sincerely, be open to that “enthusiasm” argument if Bernie were demonstrating it to be true. But so far, he has not. If he really did have a following that was so much more enthusiastic than his rivals, he would be significantly outperforming his poll numbers. In the first two states, he has slightly underperformed them. This suggests that what he has is a relatively smallish base that is *super *enthusiastic, but a super enthusiastic voter can only vote once like anyone else (although they can keep donating over and over, like my son does).
Well stated! This is true more generally of his calling himself a “socialist” instead of a “social democrat” or “progressive”. He did so because it was edgy and cool, but now it’s going to come back to bite him.