Presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’ surging lead in the polls, leading donations with a record 4 million small donors, and majority-support for his policies across demographics make it clear he’s not only the true populist in the race, but the most electable once-in-a-lifetime candidate. Faux-populism won in 2016, and centrism’s failure made it clear that ‘any blue’ just won’t do. At a pivotal historical time with climate catastrophe only 12 years away, healthcare the number one cause of bankruptcy in the wealthiest country on earth (with 78% already insured), the oligarchy’s stranglehold on the working-class now stronger than ever, stagnating wages that haven’t kept up with inflation, a human rights crisis in the Middle-East, and a student debt crisis that stagnates economic growth, only a progressive agenda can address these key issues. America deserves an uncompromised leader that has been fighting for economic, environmental, and social justice for the past 55 years. The Democratic party must return to the a new New Deal. Bernie Sanders knows what Martin Luther King Jr. knew — there can be no equality without economic justice.
As Bernie said, “It’s time to make our government work for us and not just the 1%.” Americans deserve a true leader who has fought for policies even when they were unpopular. Regardless of political party Bernie fights for everyone. He has never been compromised by accepting billionaire PAC donors like other candidates such as Warren, he has not backpedaled on policies he’s supported his entire life like Medicare for All like Warren has, he has never supported the military industrial complex by voting to increase the budget three times like Warren, Bernie doesn’t represent corporate criminals and fail to prosecute them for mortgage fraud like Harris. Bernie is not the establishment, Bernie is for the people.
Bernie doesn’t want an America that cuts taxes for the rich to fund billion dollar wars, leaves veterans on the streets, people dying bankrupt, and then proposes $64 billion cuts to Social Security Disability Insurance “balance the budget.” Bernie doesn’t want an America in which people can’t afford insulin, in which the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation and billionaires rob hard-working Americans
Bernie is the FDR Democrat our country desperately needs at a time of late-stage capitalism were people flock online to crowdfund hospital bills and work two jobs because the minimum wage hasn’t kept pace with inflation.
The senator believes in a government run by the people, by principles of economic justice seen in democracies like Canada, Switzerland, and the UK that provide their tax-paying citizens with human rights such as healthcare and education without going bankrupt. Bernie is the most honest, once-in-a-lifetime candidate that will not stand by while 3 people own more wealth than the bottom half of America, while 20% of children live in poverty, 40 million go hungry, and people can’t afford healthcare. Bernie will lower drug prescriptions, enact medicare for all, livable wages, rebuild crumbling infrastructure, eliminate college debt, rebuild social security, deliver environmental justice, rebuild unions, stimulate the economy through debt elimination.
Bernie’s Surge in The Polls
After Elizabeth Warren’s 14 point plummet in the polls since the last Quinnipiac poll from a month ago, after her the facade for her universal healthcare support fell and Kamala’s crumbling campaign resulting in lay-offs, Democratic elites and the MSM are desperately propping up establishment candidates offering no change from the oligarchy’s status-quo. Barack Obama even allegedly stated that he would “speak up to stop” Bernie This bias, if anything, is an endorsement of Sanders’ integrity, populism, and policies that have the establishment so shaken up. And according to recent polls in key democratic states, the people are waking up and they want change.
The most recent polls show Bernie handidly beating Trump 48-43%, winning all key states Democrats need to win — New Hampshire at 26%, tying with Biden at 22% in Iowa. And in an early-state voter poll (Iowa, NH, NV, and SC), Sanders has surged to second place at 23% (+5) while Biden has fallen -3%. Furthermore, Bernie has gained 9 points in the pivotal primary and caucus states. In a general election head to head: Sanders wins Michigan 57% (+14) to Trump 43%, New Hampshire 52-48%.
This should come as no surprise. Polls during the last election’s primary season consistently showed Sanders handily defeating Trump by 10 points or more, while Clinton led him by only a few points within the margin of error. This is easy to fathom considering Trump secured the nomination as Hillary lost the three historically blue states that Bernie did well in during the primaries. Sanders beat Clinton in Wisconsin and Michigan. And the DNC chosen candidate lost Pennsylvania. Narrow margins of eight-tenths, three-tenths, and 1.2% in these three Rust Belt states where Sanders’ message resonated, handed the election to Trump.
Moderates and Democrats
Senator Sanders also performed well among moderates (Sanders leads 56-28%), and he even has a 78% favorability rating among Democrats.
Bernie Wins Among Minority, Female, and Millenial Support
The American people from all backgrounds have overwhelmingly spoken in favor of Bernie Sanders. According to a Harvard-Harris poll, 58% of non-white voters; that is, 73% among African-Americans, 68% among Hispanics, 62% among Asian-Americans, 56% among women, 62% among 18-34-year-olds and 78% among Democrats. In a general head-to-head, Bernie leads among African American voters, receiving 83% support compared to only 5% for Trump.
Bernie Sanders also dominates with the most powerful voting bloc — millennials. In general election polls, Sanders wins with younger voters aged 18-29, leading 70-21%. He also beats Trump with voters age 30-49 (48-43%), while Trump wins voters aged 50+ (Trump leads 53% to 39%). Sanders even leads among men 51-41%), non-college educated voters (Sanders leads 49-42%), and Independent voters Sanders leads 56-28%.”
Bernie Wins Among Independents
A widespread concern among Sanders skeptics is how he will fare among independent voters but Sanders leads 56-28% among Independents, and he fares well among the rust-belt Obama coalition which crossed over for Trump in 2016.
More Donors Than Trump and Any Other Candidate
Bernie has more donors than Trump and any other candidate. He has the biggest grassroots support, from nurses to military members But the media tells us that raising $5.9 million in one day is no big deal. That $10 million in a week means he should drop out.
Bernie Draws Back the Rust-Belt Obama Coalition Democrats Lost in 2016
The working-class coalition transcends political party. Bernie’s agenda fights for every American regardless of their class, party, or race and people are starting to see that. Bernie will not only win the primary with his surging early-voting state polls, but he will win the general election with his fervent support among Independents, and favorability among Republicans.
Bernie Will Draw Support From Republican Voters in the General
Fox News viewers are more likely to support Bernie than those who watch MSNBC. The Red-baiting conspiracy channel full of biased hit-pieces that pays propaganda artists to provide insightful commentary such as,” I don’t know what it is about Bernie, he just makes my skin crawl.” Bernie won every county in West Virginia in 2016. Sanders has been an effective, mediating, bipartisan voice, reaching across the aisle in CNN town halls and making Trump voters ‘feel the bern.’ Time and time again, his centered economic message has reached coal country effectively with none of the dripping ‘liberal east coast elite’ condescension. In a West-Virginia townhall a county of Trump voters thanked Bernie and clapped for raising taxes, Medicare for all, and free college. His working-class message would’ve obviously resonated with disgruntled Trump voters on it’s own, but his ability to effectively communicate across the aisle would’ve done numbers.
Centrism Doesn’t Work. Bernie is The Only True New Deal Democrat.
Neo-liberalism resulted in 910 total seats lost under 8 years of a Democratic White House. It handed over rampant legislative control to the Tsar in Chief for two years. The Democratic party has moved righ of center, not left. While candidates like Warren (“capitalist at heart”) try to negotiate with a broken system, Bernie is trying rebuild it in favor of working-class Americans. While Democrats and Republicans practice bipartisanship in bailing out Wall St., passing corporate tax cuts, and funding the military industrial complex, Bernie wants a return it to New Deal style politics. A return to an America that works for all
Neo-liberalism lost in 2016 after years of democratic establishment politics failed to deliver hope and change. Working-class whites who previously voted for Obama were fed up with establishment politics and an unresponsive plutocracy so they voted for the only general election candidate who wasn’t bought by Wall Street and promised to remedy working-class struggles. Who else had an populist, working-class message and wasn’t lying about it? Sanders who made economic inequality the platform of his campaign would have obliterated Trump. But he won, and the country lost thanks to democrat hubris.
Left-wing policies are were the numbers are at.Hillary failed to draw Obama voters, and experienced the downfalls of low-voter turnout that come with a centrist, establishment, purely opposition campaign. She won 55% of the vote compared to Obama’s 69% in 2012, seeing a decrease in support from black, Latino, young voters and non-college whites. She lost the rust-belt Bernie had won the primary in, lost the millenial vote Bernie gained more votes. Both Trump and her combined, and garnered only 28% of the non-college white vote where Obama had previously won 40% of in 2012.
The first female to win the nomination for president didn’t even gain 50% support from white women against the man with sexual assault allegations and and the Access Hollywood tape. Compared to Obama’s 93% of the black vote, Hillary garnered 88% of the black vote against a candidate who was sued twice by the DOJ for not renting to African Americans. And 65% Latinos vs 71% for Obama against a candidate who called them rapists. Most damaging, 54% millennial support, compared to obama’s 60%. Guess who draws millennials? Bernie Sanders and his progressive policies. In fact, more young people voted for Sanders than Clinton and Trump combined.
Center-left corporatist politics no longer work, It contends that to gain back a disenchanted voting base you have to further alienate them by fully and openly embracing neo-conservatism just to pander to right-wingers who would never vote blue in a million years. The solution to a low-voter turnout epidemic in the 2016 election is to adopt more of the things that made them stay home, as part of your campaign. How is it possible that the party of Medicare cuts won the largest majority in Congress and state legislatures since 1928 when the majority of Americans support progressive policies?
It’s simple, Democrats have abandoned the illusion of being the party of progress in favor of big corporate interests.
Medicare for All Isn’t Radical, $6.4 trillion Spent On Wars Since 2001 Is. The Majority of Americans Support Bernie’s Policies
Sanders was voted the most popular politician in America per a Fox News poll. There’s a reason he has a higher approval rating than any Democrat or Republican on the hill. It’s not just his unwavering morals, pseudonym as the “Amendment King,” or corporate-interest free record. It’s obfuscated fact that the majority of the country supports progressive policies and the majority of the electorate identifies as independents.
Fifty-eight percent of Americans support single-payer, 88% oppose cuts to Social Security, voters in red states want Medicaid expanded, 68% think the wealthy pay too little taxes, 64% support regulating greenhouse gas emissions,58% support breaking up big banks, 63% support raising the minimum wage to $15.00, 53% support labor union law, 64% think corporations don’t pay their fair share.
John F. Kennedy once advocated for Medicare For All, Eisenhower’s top tax bracket was 90%. Back when the middle-class flourished because of their policies, no one ever called them radical.
But How Will We Pay For It?
No one ever asked how we would pay for $6.4 trillion on wars in the Middle-East and Asia since 2001, but here we are. We also don’t need a candidate who talks about “expanding” the ACA while people die rationing insulin and not affording healthcare. The ACA raised premiums and deductibles nearly 300%, should we expand them to 600%?
In the world-power that is the United States, medical expenses have long been the number one cause of bankruptcy, with 78% of filers already having health-insurance. It should be considered a serious issue when inhabitants of the wealthiest country have to choose between death or bankruptcy, food or medicine. The healthcare industry has turned into a for-profit business, which despite having skyrocketing costs, leave us at 33rd place in life expectancy and outcomes that are not notably superior. To put it simply, Americans are paying more tax money per capita and getting less. Whether one thinks healthcare is a right or not, you should favor the most fiscally responsible choice, a choice which happens to save millions of Americans lives. And that is the core of a single-payer system.
We currently spend $20 trillion a year; $15 trillion through insurance premiums and $5 trillion through co-pays. With the government spending an amount per capita far more than any other nations at $3.2 trillion a year, 17% of our GDP, $10,000 per person. That’s double what the United Kingdom spends, and more than Germany and Canada, for a whole lot of medically induced bankruptcy here. Contrary to popular American-exceptionalist-belief, this does not give us better healthcare outcomes and we rank last among 11 countries according to a Commonwealth Fund report.
Who’s to blame for this cost-ineffective system bringing us subpar care? The answer is – the for-profit industry sustained by insurance companies. We’ve created a broken system where the goal is maximizing profit. This inevitably leads to over-treatment, inflated prescription drug prices, and 30 million drastically uninsured. We’re quite literally profiting off illness. Why are we okay with all of this? Why are we okay with investors and CEO’s making billions off the most vulnerable in our society while they suffer? It’s not cost-effective, it’s not outcome effective. The only people this crony system benefits is insurance and pharmaceutical industry CEO’s. Not the people providing healthcare, not the people receiving it.
We currently spend $20 trillion in healthcare costs – $6 trillion of that stemming from insurance costs, and $3.1 trillion in tax subsidies to employers. By eliminating the useless middleman insurance companies are through single-payer, we save $9 trillion total from that annual $20 trillion budget. There’s $11 trillion of costs left to take up that can then be covered by a 6.2% income-based premium from employers, and 2.2% income surtax from households. If we look to Bernie Sander’s plan, families of four making under $28,800 would see no such increase. So yes, taxes would increase for everyone else, but by paying a relatively small amount more in taxes for full-coverage healthcare, we’re all saving the enormous amount of $20 trillion we would otherwise pay. By enacting such a tax increase and eliminating the nonsensical insurance industry from the picture, Americans would save $9 trillion a year they would otherwise spend for premiums that don’t cover a papercut.
The economic benefits are endless. An average middle-class family of four, making $50,000 a year, would go from paying $5,600 a year for healthcare to $466 under a 2.2% tax hike. Does that sound like socialism? Moreover, those who would normally be covered by employer-sponsored healthcare would see a salary increase because they’d no longer have it deducted from their paycheck. Small businesses wouldn’t be forced to spend time and money negotiating coverage with insurance companies thus increasing productivity. It’s preventative – saving people from having to go through extended hospital visits and chronic illness treatments. Single payer would also slash costs imposed on hospitals by the industry, to the tune of $400 billion a year. Which is already “enough to cover all the uninsured.”
Furthermore, all the problems under our current system, the shortcomings of the Affordable Care Act, bureaucratic nightmares, disappear. All medically necessary services are covered: doctor, hospital, preventive, emergency, long care, psychological, dental, vision, prescription drugs. People can choose their own provider. Priorities are no longer distorted and better quality of healthcare is provided no matter how much money you make. People would no longer be overtreated because they can pay more.In addition, single payer would reduce incentives to over treat and lower drug prices according to the PNHP.
Healthcare is a human need, not a luxury. It’s utterly despicable and nonsensical for Americans to pay more per capita than any other nation for people to be led to medically induced bankruptcy, 27 million to be uninsured, 30 million underinsured, and to rank 33rd in life expectancy. To pay more and get less because the health insurance industry must butt in the middle of it so billionaires can line their pockets.
Warren and the Establishment Candidates Fall Short of Change
The mark of a true leader is being on the frontline of every progressive socioeconomic issue for the past 55 years like Bernie Sanders has, not just when it’s politically convenient to do so. Bernie was fighting for the same issues since the 1960s before he even entered Congress, when he was arrested protesting desegregation. He’d been the only Independent in Congress for decades when he had nothing to gain. Unlike Warren, Bernie was not a Republican during the Reagan administration, he was fighting for economic justice. While Harvard was promoting Warren as their “first Native American professor,” Bernie was still championing universal healthcare. While Warren — who has backtracked on Medicare for All-– was appropriating Native American racial identity for career advancement, Bernie was fighting for the environment. If anything, she should be Treasury Secretary not President.
Warren does not support Medicare for All. She is a faux progressive riding on the movement brought into the mainstream by Bernie in 2016. Warren will not deliver Medicare for All and prevent 500,000 from going bankrupt in 2020 from medical bills. She retracted her support and instead advocated for a “public option,” introduced at the end of her 3rd year, as a 10-year-plan. While Bernie vows to introduce the bill he wrote in his first week in office.
Warren can not be trusted to upend a fundamentally broken economic system rampant with wealth-inequality when she has a history of accepting billionaires’ donations. She has signaled to the oligarchy’s party insiders her deference and loyalty. Bernie Sanders has never accepted billionaire donations. Senator Sanders plans to make them pay their fair share of taxes instead of paying $0 a year like Amazon.
Unlike Warren, Bernie didn’t vote to fund Trump’s military industrial complex three times — raising the latest defense fund budget to $700 billion.
Unlike Kamala Harris, he’s not a mortgage fraud criminal defender, big pharma gatekeeper, or a plutocrats selling the middle-class increased domestic surveillance powers, voting for $716 billion military industrial complex spending bill and deregulating Wall Street. Bernie is a candidate whose agenda stands for issues the majority of Americans support – single-payer, higher wages, access to higher education, criminal justice reform, green energy.
Why Bernie?
A Bernie Sanders presidency means Medicare for All, the fiscally responsible $2-trillion-saving plan which is cheaper than premiums. (Because despite paying twice as much per capita as other countries in healthcare, leaves 30 million uninsured.) It means standing for economic justice – a higher minimum wage closer to inflation, closing corporate tax loopholes that leave companies like Amazon paying $0 in taxes, rebuilding labor unions which brought us the weekend and minimum wages, and it means environmental protection..
It means ending Citizens United, fighting against voter suppression and gerrymandering, and criminal justice reform in a country that spends $80 billion a year imprisoning more people than any other country. It means aggressively combating impending climate change destruction with a Green New Deal.
It means boosting the economy by supporting the middle-class who has the highest MPC, through $2-trillion-saving healthcare, tuition-free public college, $1.5 trillion student loan debt elimination economists approve of, expansion of social security, and green energy jobs. It means supporting foreign policy based on diplomacy and human rights. (Bernie Sanders has even called for cutting aid to Israel and redirecting it to provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza.)
A vote for Bernie Sanders is a once-in-a-lifetime vote for economic, social, racial, and environmental justice. A one in a lifetime chance to return to the America that worked for the middle-class. Bernie is the foreign policy, environmental, and immigration candidate. He’s the candidate for all of America, not the corporate plutocrat elite compromised by special interests. He’s the most electable candidate that can beat corrupt, con-man, child-caging, Social Security-defunding, corporate welfare enacting Trump. He is unmatched because he’s driven by changing America so the working-class can rule, not by becoming presidents like other candidates.
At a time when centrism is no longer a winning strategy, this populist, modern day FDR will not beat Trump, but he will return the Democratic party to the left, and deliver a new deal. Bernie Sanders will does not play with the broken system, he plans to repair it in favor of the working class. The Amendment King, son of working-class migrants, built the most progressive DNC platform, brought Medicare for All into the mainstream arena, got Amazon workers $15 an hour. Imagine what he can accomplish in office. He has had nothing to gain being by being on the right side of history for the past 55 years. We have every human right to gain by being on the right side of history in 2020.
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