http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/feb/06/bernie-sanders-america-ready-for-socialist-president?utm_source=esp&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=GU+Today+USA+-+Version+A&utm_term=155341&subid=10534205&CMP=ema_565a
Dr Krissy Haglund does not care if she is labeled a
socialist. Or an ideological
purist. Or, indeed, any of the other epithets thrown at Americans who are
flocking to support Bernie
Sanders for the Democratic presidential nomination. She knows what she is:
fed up.
On the campaign bus with Bernie Sanders: 'I am moved by the
passion'
“I have patients who are deciding not to have children or
are unable to buy a house because of their student loans,” says the family physician from
Minneapolis, who this week drove four hours with her two children to see
the senator speak in Iowa.
“My loan is now $283,000,” she says. “It’s gone up $60,000
in the six years since I graduated from medical school. This is a national
crisis that needs deep, immediate attention.”
As the only candidate proposing to abolish tuition fees at
public universities, Sanders frequently takes on the role of a reverse
auctioneer, asking members of the audience at his rallies to shout out how much
student debt they have.
For a while, the record was $300,000. Then he met a
dentist who graduated with loans of $400,000.
But paying for college by taxing Wall Street speculation is
not the only policy that has seen the senator from Vermont branded a dangerous
extremist – by his own party. Despite the limited health insurance reforms
passed by Barack Obama, 29 million Americans remain without any coverage and
many more are underinsured to the point where they cannot afford to see a
doctor.
So Sanders does the same thing with healthcare, asking
audiences to compete to reveal the size of their deductible – the fixed amount
per treatment that must be paid by patients before their insurer will contribute
anything. At almost every rally someone gets up to $5,000, sometimes in tears.
His plan to replace this bureaucratic and expensive system
by expanding the public Medicare program emulates a “single payer” insurance
model used in Canada, rather than the direct state provision of Britain’s National
Health Service. It aims to reduce overall costs caused by hospitals and drug
companies charging the weak US consumer many times the equivalent in other
countries that benefit from pooled purchasing power.
Nevertheless, when inevitably someone asks if the US can
afford to follow other rich countries down the road of universal healthcare and
access to tertiary education, Sanders likes to remind them of the trillions of
dollars of income redistribution that has already taken place in the opposite
direction: a trend that has left median wages slumping, but 58% of all new
income since the banking crash going to the top 1%.
“Enough is enough,” audience members typically roar by the
time he reaches this point in the well-worn speech.
“A few years ago you could graduate high school and get a
job and just work hard, put on those work boots, and you’d be able to achieve
whatever you wanted,” agrees Anna Mead, 22, a student from Long Beach, New
Jersey, outside a rally in New Hampshire.
“Now, it’s just not the case anymore. We’ve seen vast
amounts of inequality just building and building throughout the decades to the
extent that the 1% has accumulated such a vast amount of wealth that exceeds
40% of the population. I feel like the United States has always been
strengthened whenever we had a president take any kind of policy for the middle
class to build them up. When you build everyone up, everyone does better.”
The notion, proposed by Sanders, that a corrupt campaign
finance system is the only thing standing between voters and a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to change this might seem simplistic. But it is
proving wildly popular.
From a standing start, he has closed the gap in the
Democratic primary race between himself and a once unassailable Hillary
Clinton, from 36%
to just 2%, according to one national
poll this week.
Sanders and Trump lead as New Hampshire vote looms –
campaign updates
Though few believe this one poll to be indicative of the
true national picture just yet, real-life voting
in the Iowa caucus last week brought Sanders to within 0.3% of Clinton.
In New Hampshire, which votes for a Democratic nominee on
Tuesday, Sanders is so far ahead of the former secretary of state in the polls
that her advisers would be delighted if they could contain his win to single
digits. Many are already dismissing the result as a home turf blip and
encouraging Clinton to leave the state on Sunday to focus her time elsewhere.
Locals in New Hampshire bristle, though, at the notion they
would be swayed simply because someone is from next-door Vermont, a liberal
bastion that the more libertarian iconoclasts in the Granite State regard with
suspicion.
This argument also ignores the fact that the state Hillary Clinton
represented in Congress is only 50 miles from the New Hampshire border,
although New York reportedly has such ambiguous feelings about its former
senator that the Sanders camp claims she refused their requests to hold a
debate there.
Yet much as it pains
his supporters to acknowledge any frailty, Sanders is under growing
pressure from Clinton during their debates. The attack strategy varies.
Sometimes she argues they are dancing on the head of a pin by debating who is a
true progressive, but when the policy gulf is illuminated the attack switches
to what she claims are his wildly unrealistic proposals.
Privately, Clinton’s attack machine has gone further, claiming
deep-seated communist sympathies. That serves as a likely prelude to what
Sanders might face from Republicans in the still somewhat unlikely event that
he wins the Democratic primary.
Sanders has never hidden his political background and has
left much for critics to pick over. But it is his steadfast determination not
to hide from the label “democratic socialist” that causes most confusion.
In a lengthy
speech at Georgetown University last November, he argued that his political
philosophy was most in keeping with that of Franklin D Roosevelt, who similarly
proposed a mix of public works, help for the poor and banking reform to lift
America out of the Great Depression.
“I don’t know what we mean when we say he is a socialist
because my idea of Bernie
Sanders is that he’s an FDR liberal,” agrees Sharon Ranzavage, 69, an
attorney from Flemington, New Jersey, speaking outside an event in Manchester,
New Hampshire, on Friday.
“He’s back to the future, if you will, and that’s why I’m
excited about him. I think the Democratic party in this country has veered very
far to the right. We have to get back to who we are, which is taking care of
each other. We’re a capitalist country but we need to modify the extremes of
capitalism.”
Confusion also stems from the fact that Sanders uses the
phrase “democratic socialist” partly to stress his belief that change must come
through the ballot box, but also because, in continental Europe at least, he
would probably be known as a social democrat, a label that does not easily
translate to the US.
A “Democrat” in US parlance is something the independent
senator from Vermont only became when he decided to seek the party’s
presidential nomination in May. Anyone using the word “social” in American
politics might as well go the whole hog and add the “ist” before somewhere else
does.
In a British context, Sanders would be hard to place too.
Many of his core proposals – universal access to healthcare, paid maternity
leave and a more generous minimum wage – are accepted, in principle at least,
by all the main UK parties including the Conservatives, who recently put
up the British minimum wage as a centerpiece of their budget.
In relative terms, Sanders represents a swing to the left
for the Democratic party that is analogous to Jeremy Corbyn’s recent victory in
the Labour leadership campaign. But on foreign policy and absolute comparisons
of domestic policies he would probably be closer to pre-Blairite Labour
reformers of the 1980s and 90s such as Neil Kinnock or John Smith.
Back in New Hampshire this week, a radical mood is conjured
up at rallies calling for a “political revolution” and blasting out John
Lennon’s Power to the People. But when Sanders punches his hand into the air,
he quickly unclenches the fist, to avoid imagery that is too strident.
We will have to wait for several more primary results to
know whether American politics could possibly be ready for a self-avowed
socialist. Already, the response from supporters to seem to be a shrug that
suggests this is the wrong question.
“I feel like I finally have a politician who will match my
true feelings and hopes for this country,” says Haglund.
Is America ready for socialism? Probably not. But it might
be ready for Sanders.
Sanders fans on socialism
What is wrong with being a socialist?
Dwayne Hamm, 23, from New Brunswick, New Jersey:
I believe what people think is a socialist is: they get
confused and think we’re heading towards the dreaded communism. But I think
people confuse themselves about what it is Sanders is trying to do and what it
is a socialist believes in. You’ll see that there’s nothing wrong. All we’re
asking for is equality across the board. And to those who have privilege it may
seem oppressive. And I feel that’s what people think the problem is.
Can you be a democratic socialist?
Anna Mead, 22, from Long Beach, New Jersey:
I don’t think socialism can exist properly without
democracy. Socialism is community regulation of the means of production and
distribution.
How do you feel about Hillary Clinton trying to woo young
people?
Fiona Boomer, 19, from Salt Lake City, Utah:
I do have to give credit where credit’s due but as a young
person Bernie’s stance on free education would be amazing. I’m deeply in debt
as it is. It would be great if that was free. Hillary is debt free and Bernie
is tuition free. That’s a big deciding factor for me. I do think Hillary is
doing a good job. She claims she’s being more realistic but I think Bernie is
realistic.
How likely is it that Clinton will win you over?
Rene Casiano, 41, from the Bronx, New York:
Honestly if Bernie doesn’t make it I will support her
because she’s still better than everyone else on the other side of the
spectrum.
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