Monthly Archives: August 2019

The fact that Trump is an egomaniac hardly constitutes news. Before becoming president his professional life was characterized by a succession of attention-seeking vanity projects. Through his career as a property developer, he oversaw the construction of a series of gaudy buildings, which stand as monuments to kitsch in locations as diverse as Panama, Uruguay, the Philippines, Turkey, and India. Via his appearance on the reality TV show The Apprentice, meanwhile, he established himself as a vulgar showman and self-important bully.

During the campaign trail, his self-absorption had the chance to further flourish as he basked in the adulation of cheering fans. With friendly audiences lapping up practically anything he said, he took to making ever more outlandish statements, such as his claim that he could shoot someone and still win the election. On the primary debate stage, he showed off the skill in belittling and humiliatingothers that he had honed on The Apprentice, as he reveled in issuing cruel and juvenile insults at his opponents. When Hillary Clinton became the Democratic Party candidate for the general election, the insults morphed into promises to, if elected, use his position of power to imprison her (and, presumably, other political opponents).

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According to recent polling data, former Vice President Joe Biden has a two-to-one lead over his next closest rival in the Democratic primary contest, Bernie Sanders. According to a Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll, Biden has 34 percent support from registered Democratic voters compared to 17 percent who support Sanders. This will surely embolden those in the establishment wing of the Democratic Party who claim that a moderate, centrist figure like Biden stands the best chance of defeating Trump next year.

Of course, this is completely contradicted by the outcome of the 2016 election. Hillary Clinton’s association with the failed “New Democrat” policies of her husband and, above all, the corrupt Washington status quo of state capture by corporate and financial interests played right into Trump’s hands. He was able to (falsely) portray himself as an outsider standing up for the common man who, as an uber-wealthy billionaire, was not subject to these malign special interests. Of course, this was from the beginning, a transparent con job; once in office Trump has shown himself to be every bit as beholden to corporate and financial interests as any of his predecessors – whether it be his appointment of corporate crooks to positions within his administration or his shameless pandering to business interests via deregulatory legislation. In such a context, unless the Democrats offer a genuine progressive who really does represent an alternative to both Trumpism and the stale neoliberalism/imperialism-lite of the Democratic Party establishment, Trump may well be able again to channel enough disaffection amongst the benighted masses of Middle America into another narrow electoral college victory.

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Ever since Bernie Sanders became a nationally known figure during the 2016 Democratic primary race, his proposal to bring European-style publicly-provided universal healthcare to the US has become firmly entrenched in the country’s political mainstream. Sometimes called “single-payer healthcare,” the idea is to take private healthcare companies out of the equation and have the government directly pay healthcare costs. The most simple way of doing this, of which Sanders is a strong advocate, is to expand Medicare – which provides public healthcare to over-65s – to everyone, regardless of age. Other candidates in the 2020 Democratic Party primary have latched on to this “Medicare-for-all” proposal and support for it has become something of an acid test to gauge their progressive credentials. Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Tulsi Gabbard have pledged their backing, though in spite of their best efforts, the policy remains most closely associated with Sanders and his brand of democratic socialism (more accurately described as social democracy.)

But for someone who has been such a champion of the issue for so many years, it is remarkable how Sanders occasionally demonstrates considerable misunderstanding of its intricacies, and in doing so, plays straight into the hands of his right-wing and centrist opponents. The latest example of this happened during the July 30 Democratic primary debate. Host Jake Tapper asked Sanders about whether the proposal would require an increase in taxes. Just days earlier, Tapper had put the same question to Sanders during a one-on-one interview aired on CNN on July 28. Tapper played a clip of fellow Democratic Party primary candidate Joe Biden. In the video, Biden says that his opponents who say they can implement Medicare-for-all without raising taxes on the middle class are living in a “fantasy world.”

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