Michael Brochstein/Sipa USA via AP Images
Bernie Sanders (I-VT) speaking at a hearing of the Senate Budget Committee, March 17, 2021.
The punditocracy is overdue on acknowledging just how well Bernie Sanders plays the game of realpolitik. The man knows how to push ideas into public consciousness, how to articulate the inchoate yearnings of millions of his compatriots, how to leverage his proposals so they have clout, and how—and when—to settle. His decades-long push for Medicare for All has won over much of the Democratic Party; he had no hesitation voting for Obamacare even when it lacked a public option; and his push for M4A just continued with renewed force. In Bernieworld, the perfect is not the enemy of the good, even though no one campaigns more assiduously for the perfect.
Bernie’s eye for the Big Chance and appreciation for the Realizable has only grown since the Democrats took the Senate and the White House in January, and he ascended to the chair of the Senate Budget Committee. His proposal for a $6 trillion reconciliation package is the most far-reaching set of quasi–social democratic reforms since New Deal Democrats established Social Security and the WPA in 1935. And by coming in with such a substantial sum—$6 trillion—he’s knowingly provided ample opportunity for his less enlightened moderate colleagues to whittle the package down and still end up with groundbreaking advances in social rights and provision and in climate mitigation.
The Sanders Sense of the Possible is also illustrated by his proposal to lower the age of Medicare eligibility to 60. Polls have shown that the 65-and-then-somes currently on Medicare are cool to expanding the pool of recipients, fearing that such expansion will diminish existing benefits to offset the cost of having more beneficiaries. To allay that fear, and also because it’s an element of rudimentary social decency, Sanders has linked the expansion of recipients to an expansion of benefits. His proposal also calls for Medicare to pick up the tab for seniors’ dental, hearing, and eyesight care, which costs have always fallen on the seniors themselves, forcing them either to pay for supplemental coverage or to go without. While this part of Bernie’s $6 trillion proposal may well not make it into law this year, it has established the model for how Medicare can be expanded—qualitatively as well as quantitatively—without seniors viewing such expansion as a threat.
Smart guy, that Bernie.
IF YOU’VE EVER WONDERED how our system of government has fallen short of real small-d democracy and continues to fall short to this day (see, e.g., the U.S. Senate), I have a book recommendation for you. In his book American Schism, which goes on sale today, Seth Radwell takes a hard look at the political ideas of the Enlightenment philosophers whose writings had so large an influence over our nation’s founders. Some were democrats, some preferred enlightened autocracy, and the legacy of this mishmash is on plain view in, among other things, our Constitution. And if you’re not as confident in the merits of meritocracy as Seth is (and I’m not), may I also recommend Michael Sandel’s 2020 volume The Tyranny of Merit. Two neo-Enlightenment apostles, divided yet again.
