Bernie Sanders Has Been the Most Influential Insurgent Candidate Since the 70s

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


Win or lose (hint: he’s going to lose), Bernie Sanders should feel pretty good about his success in pushing Hillary Clinton to the left during the primary campaign. She’s now against the TPP; she definitively favors a large hike in the minimum wage; and she supports expansion of Social Security. These may not seem like huge changes—and they aren’t—but they’re a lot more than most candidates accomplish. Dennis Kucinich ran twice without having any measurable effect at all on the Democratic race.

Now Bernie can take credit for one more move to the left:

“I’m also in favor of what’s called the public option, so that people can buy into Medicare at a certain age,” Mrs. Clinton said on Monday at a campaign event in Virginia. Mr. Sanders calls his single-payer health care plan “Medicare for all.” What Mrs. Clinton proposed was a sort of Medicare for more.

The Medicare program covers Americans once they reach 65. Beneficiaries pay premiums to help cover the cost of their coverage, but the government pays the bulk of the bill. Mrs. Clinton’s suggestion was that perhaps younger Americans, “people 55 or 50 and up,” could voluntarily pay to join the program.

Now, as Nancy LeTourneau points out, this is hardly something new in the Democratic Party firmament:

Back in 2009/10, Medicare buy-in was discussed as part of Obamacare — until Joe Lieberman weighed in. Given Republican obstruction at the time, health reform would not have passed unless every Democrat voted for it. One defection — ala Lieberman — was enough to end its prospects.

An expansion of Medicaid combined with the option of Medicare buy-in is an incremental path towards universal coverage. That is what Democrats (with exceptions like Lieberman — who was actually for it before he was against it) have been working towards for decades.

Be that as it may, this isn’t something Hillary has publicly supported during this year’s campaign. Until now. Why is she doing this? I’d call it a combined Bernie/Trump effect. Bernie has pushed Hillary to the left in order to win the Democratic primary and Trump has shown that it’s surprisingly safe to take a more populist tone even among Republicans. This suggests that Hillary can move a bit to the left without endangering her chances in the general election.

Whatever happens next, I’d say Bernie has been more successful at pushing the mainstream Democratic Party to the left than any insurgent candidate since the early 70s. He may not win the nomination, but that’s not a bad legacy.

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate