Tribalism is also growing within the United States of course,: racism, homophobia, blue states versus red states, neo-nazis declaring, “Jews will not replace us!”, and simmering anger — dramatically illustrated by the January 6 attempt to violently overthrow the government in order to keep a demagogue in power.

There are increasing threats to elected officials, vote counters, and other public servants.

And in the first 150 days of 2023, “…there have been 263 mass shootings — incidents with 4 or more people shot — reported in the U.S., with 327 victims killed. Both those figures are the highest ever recorded this early in a year.” []

Of course, there are a host of factors that contribute to these dangerous trends, from inequality and “lives of despair” to toxic “masculinity”, internet silos, and Fox “News”, along with those politicians and their backers who employ the old tactic of “divide and conquer”.

At a rally in Charleston, South Carolina on Saturday, Senator Bernie Sanders explained that the ruling elite and monied oligarchy win, “when they divide the working class and those living in poverty.”

“In every way that you can think,” said Sanders, “there are really smart people—out there polling today—saying: How do I get you to vote against your own self-interest? How do I get black and white and Latino and Native American, Asian American, gay, and straight against each other so that the big-money interest laugh all the way to the bank.”

“So what our movement is about, is precisely the opposite of what the big-money interests want,” he continued. “They want to divide us up and we are determined to bring working people together—black and white and Latino—all of us together around an agenda that works for us not just the billionaire class!”

A related issue is “identity politics” – the tendency of people to identify primarily with “their kind” – whichever group that is – rather than humanity as a whole. (And no group is more focused on their racist “identity” than the Ku Klux Klan).

In fact, the whole idea that humanity is divided into “races” is a relic of European colonialism (as I explained in this essay).

This us-versus-them dichotomy is extremely flexible, however, depending on the circumstances. It is the norm, for instance, to see strangers work together cooperatively when they face a common threat, such as after a hurricane or an earthquake.

The challenge is to be aware of our tendency to “otherize” people and to resist this natural, but unhealthy, tendency.

One very powerful example of the triumph of humanity over identity is the story of the American heroes who literally put themselves in the line of fire to end the My Lai massacre in Vietnam.

Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson was 25 years old when he was piloting a helicopter along with two crewmates: Glenn Andreotta, 20 years old, and Lawrence Coburn, who was just 18. On March 16, 1968, they were on patrol when they noticed a number of wounded and dead civilians all over the area. They stopped several times to attend to the victims, and a short while later, they saw other Vietnamese being chased by a U.S. Army patrol. That’s when Thompson chose humanity over tribalism and did the courageous thing – he told his crew to land the helicopter between their fellow U.S. Army troops and the Vietnamese civilians. Thompson got out of the copter and ordered the soldiers of Charlie Company to stop the massacre – or else.

His men backed him up, and the killing stopped.

Thompson then radioed two nearby pilots to come to his aid, and around a dozen Vietnamese civilians were taken out of harm’s way.

It is estimated that up to 500 Vietnamese had been killed during this massacre – and almost all were women, children, and the elderly.

The bravery of Thompson and his crew saved hundreds, perhaps even thousands of Vietnamese lives.

As usual, the U.S. military tried to cover up the story, as they did with dozens of similar atrocities in Indochina. However, in 1969, U.S. freelance journalist Seymour Hersh’s investigation discovered the truth about the My Lai massacre. (In 1970 Hersh was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting).

In 1998, thirty years after their heroic actions, Thompson, Andreotta, and Coburn were finally awarded the Soldier’s Medal.

Along with their bravery, these heroes have provided a powerful example of how important it is to take to heart the words of Betrand Russell and Albert Einstein, who wrote in 1955 that it imperative to: “Remember your humanity, and forget the rest.”

And when we do remember our own humanity, we also remember the humanity of other people.

Given today’s problems, from wars to the climate crises to hunger to growing nationalism to epidemics and nuclear weapons, the only hope we have is that enough of us will take those words to heart and stand for the right thing against tribalism and conspiracy theories.

To fix this problem, on May 17, 2023, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, Rep. Debbie Dingell, and Sen. Bernie Sanders and more than 120 other colleagues re-introduced the Medicare for All Act in the U.S. House and Senate. These landmark pieces of legislation would finally establish a single-payer national health program in the United States. These long-overdue bills are most welcomed and Congress is urged to move quickly to guarantee universal coverage, comprehensive benefits, and zero out-of-pocket costs for all U.S. residents.

The nuts and bolts of the new Medicare for All Act-2023 calls for citizens to be guaranteed access to health care while achieving significant overall savings compared to our existing obsolete system. This is accomplished by lowering administrative and eliminating profiteering Big Insurance costs, controlling Big Pharma prices of prescription drugs, fees for physicians and other health-care professionals and hospitals, reducing unnecessary treatments and expanding preventative care. Each of these bills provides all residents of the United States and its territories with a nationally consistent comprehensive benefit design, eliminates nearly all copays and deductibles, is funded through an equitable tax model, protects current benefits and services for veterans and Native Americans while also including them in Medicare for All, and dedicates expanded resources towards improving equity and justice in health care/health insurance.

EVERYBODY IN, NOBODY OUT !

The new legislation upgrades Medicare with a 21st century modern and improved “Medicare for All” health insurance system that covers all age groups, cradle to grave. Newborns will leave the hospital with their new Medicare card, and drop it off years later at life’s end. Benefits of the new act include the following items and services if medically necessary or appropriate for the maintenance of health or for the diagnosis, treatment or rehabilitation of a health condition:

(1) Hospital services, including inpatient and outpatient hospital care, including 24-hour-a-day emergency services and inpatient prescription drugs.

(2) Ambulatory patient services.

(3) Primary and preventive services, including chronic disease management.

(4) Prescription drugs and medical devices, in- cluding outpatient prescription drugs, medical de- vices, and biological products.

(5) Mental health and substance use treatment services, including inpatient care.

(6) Laboratory and diagnostic services.

(7) Comprehensive reproductive, maternity, and newborn care.

(8) Dentistry/Oral health, audiology, and vision/ophthalmology services.

(9) Rehabilitative and habilitative services and devices.

(10) Emergency services and transportation.

(11) Early and periodic screening, diagnostic, and treatment services.

(12) Necessary transportation to receive health care services for persons with disabilities, older indi- viduals with functional limitations, or low-income in- dividuals (as determined by the Secretary).

(14) Hospice care.

(15) Services provided by a licensed marriage and family therapist or a licensed mental health counselor.(In addition to psychiatrists, licensed clinical psychologists, licensed clinical social workers, psychiatric nurses.)

CO-PAYMENTS / DEDUCTIBLES ENDED

Co-payments and deductibles paid at health professionals’ offices are ended because payment for health insurance is fully prepaid directly into Medicare, just like pre-payment into Social Security, and covered at first dollar amounts. This means the obsolete 80 percent/20 percent payment split between private health insurance companies and Medicare is eliminated, with Medicare for All 2023 covering 100 percent.

All residents are guaranteed access to quality health care while achieving significant overall savings compared to our existing Medicare system by lowering administrative costs, controlling the prices of prescription drugs and fees for physicians and other health/mental health-care professionals and hospitals, reducing unnecessary treatments and expanding preventive care.

HEALTH CARE ESTABLISHED AS A BASIC HUMAN RIGHT

Good health care is established as a basic human right, as in almost all other advanced countries. Nobody would have to forego needed treatments because they didn’t have insurance or they couldn’t afford high insurance premiums and co-pays. Nobody would have to fear a financial disaster because they faced a health care crisis in their family. Virtually all families would end up financially better off and most businesses would also experience cost savings compared to what they pay now to cover their employees. Health insurance is based on residence, not employment.

With M4A, citizens are guaranteed access to health care while achieving significant overall savings compared to our existing obsolete system. This is accomplished by lowering administrative and eliminating profiteering Big Insurance costs, controlling Big Pharma prices of prescription drugs, fees for physicians and other health-care professionals and hospitals, reducing unnecessary treatments and expanding preventative care.

FINANCING M4A SYSTEM:

We finance our new and improved Medicare for All system by eliminating profiteering by the private health insurance industry and slashing the system-wide administrative waste they generate, with a single streamlined, nonprofit public payer health insurance system. Such savings, estimated in 2017 to be about $500 billion annually, would be redirected to patient care.

More than two dozen independent analyses of federal and state single-payer legislation by agencies such as the Congressional Budget Office, the General Accountability Office, the Lewin Group and Mathematica Policy Research Group have found that the administrative savings and other efficiencies of a single-payer program would provide more than enough resources to provide first-dollar coverage to everyone in the country with no increase in overall U.S. health spending.

According to a 2016 study in the American Journal of Public Health, tax-funded expenditures already account for about two-thirds of U.S. health spending. That revenue would be retained and supplemented by modest progressive taxes based on ability to pay, taxes that would typically be fully offset by ending today’s very high premiums paid to the for-profit private insurance industry and out-of-pocket expenses for care. The vast majority of U.S. households — one study says 95 percent —would come out financially ahead. The system would reap savings by dealing with drug and medical supply companies for lower prices.

M4A is a solid investment in our country because it promotes a social service for universal access to affordable health insurance for everyone. The USA is a country where health insurance for medical and mental health care is a function of socio-economic status. Everyone knows that this inhumane system should have been corrected long ago, but the death and illness ravages of the pandemic crisis makes it impossible to any longer avoid reality. We must immediately end our moral crime of having the greatest health system in the world, but only for those who can afford it.

WHY BIG INSURANCE OPPOSES MEDICARE FOR ALL: ! PROFITS – PROFITS – PROFITS !

I. Highlights from Wendall Potter, Feb 27,2023,” BIG INSURANCE 2022: Revenues reached $1.25 trillion thanks to sucking billions out of the pharmacy supply chain – and taxpayers’ pockets”
Analysis of the 2022 financial statements of UnitedHealth Group, CVS/Aetna, Cigna, Elevance, Humana, Centene, and Molina

1. Big Insurance revenues and profits have increased by 300% and 287% respectively since 2012 due to explosive growth in the companies’ pharmacy benefit management (PBM) businesses and the Medicare replacement plans they call Medicare Advantage.

2. The for-profits now control more than 80% of the national PBM market and more than 70% of the Medicare Advantage market.

3. In 2022, Big Insurance revenues reached $1.25 trillion and profits soared to $69.3 billion.
That’s a 300% increase in revenue and a 287% increase in profits from 2012, when revenue was $412.9 billion and profits were $24 billion.

II. Facts and figures to keep in mind as Big Insurance thrives (W. Potter)

1. 27.5 million people remain uninsured in the United States.

2. Up to 14 million more will lose their Medicaid coverage once the pandemic emergency period ends later this year.

3. 100 million of us – almost one of every three people in this country – now have medical debt.

4. In 2023, U.S. families can be on the hook for up to $18,200 in out-of-pocket requirements before their coverage kicks in, up 43% since 2014 when it was $12,700.

5. The Affordable Care Act allows the out-of-pocket maximum to increase annually – 43% since the maximum limit went into effect in 2014.

6.44% of people in the United States who purchased coverage through the individual market and (ACA) marketplaces were underinsured or functionally uninsured.

7. 46% of those surveyed said they had skipped or delayed care because of the cost.

8. 42% said they had problems paying medical bills or were paying off medical debt.

9. Half (49%) said they would be unable to pay an unexpected medical bill within 30 days, including 68% of adults with low income, 69% of Black adults, and 63% of Latino/Hispanic adults.

10. In 2021, about $650 million, or about one-third of all funds raised by GoFundMe, went to medical campaigns. That’s not surprising when you realize that in the United States, even people with insurance all too often feel they have no choice but to beg for money from strangers to get the care they or a loved one needs.

11. 62% of bankruptcies are related to medical costs.

12. Even as we spend about $4.5 trillion on health care a year, Americans are now dying younger than people in other wealthy countries.

13. Life expectancy in the United States actually decreased by 2.8 years between 2014 and 2021, erasing all gains since 1996, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

As these numbers show, the real boogeymen opposing M4A are the wealth addicted private health insurance and pharmaceutical industries who have the most to lose if their huge profits are redirected to direct patient care. Beholden members of Congress want to protect the interest of their insurance and Big Pharma donors — these two industries spent $371 million on lobbying in 2017 alone. Big Pharma and Big Insurance industries have literally bought most of our legislators (both Democrat and Republican). A massive disinformation/fear campaign has promoted the myth that Medicare for All would limit choice of doctors and hospitals, create unsustainable costs, and expansive, uncontrolled bureaucracy. These myths better describe the reality of our present system based on the private insurance industry.

If we are a society that cares enough to see that everyone receive the health care they need, the basic point of Medicare for All, then it’s important that citizens reject catastrophic expectations and predictions, false fear and scare tactics of the M4A opposition. Citizens now better understand that the real cause of high US health insurance costs is the private insurance industry’s need for high profit. A record number of Americans reject our fractured, profit-based health insurance system and support programs like House and Senate Bills, which improve Medicare’s benefits by adding in previously uncovered services such as dental, hearing, vision, and long-term care while eliminating cumbersome out-of-pocket fees with prepaid health insurance.

Although Medicare for All supporters are often derided as unrealistic, in fact it’s not realistic to expect that Americans will continue passively accepting ‘how much money is in the bank account’ as the most significant factor in their mortality. By seeking to weaken Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare to fund tax cuts for the rich during a time of the Covid-19 public health crisis, the one percenters have elevated self-interest even further above life itself for the ninety-nine percent.

The USA is a country where health insurance for medical and mental health care is a function of socio-economic status. Everyone knows that this inhumane system should have been corrected long ago. We must immediately end our moral crime of having the greatest health system in the world, but only for those who can afford it.

A majority of Americans support Medicare and want expansion of this program to provide health insurance for all. Write to your senators and representatives and let them know how you feel about expanding Medicare. By making health insurance available to all age groups, we can have the assurance that this life-saving health insurance program will continue.

Sanders, who is Jewish, has several beefs with the current government in Israel, not least that he is “embarrassed” by it. Israel should not reflect on Jewish Americans, who are only responsible for their own individual actions and speech. The world is unfair that way, though, and for some people the fascist takeover in Israel will raise questions about what sort of person would not only support it but also try to silence anyone who speaks out against it. Sanders clearly feels that it is an albatross about his neck.

For Sanders, a true Mensch, however, it isn’t only about Israel. He says he is worried about “what may happen to the Palestinian people.” The hate-filled Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir of the extremist Religious Zionism bloc have been put in charge of the three million occupied Palestinians in the West Bank, and are now in charge of the blockade against the 2 million besieged Palestinians of the occupied Gaza Strip. It is as though the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan were put in charge of millions of African-Americans.

Sanders, moreover, doesn’t just want to complain about this alarming state of affairs, which the CIA believes could result in a new round of violence. He said,

“I mean, I haven’t said this publicly. But I think the United States gives billions of dollars in aid to Israel. And I think we’ve got to put some strings attached to that and say you cannot run a racist government. You cannot turn your back on a two-state solution. You cannot demean the Palestinian people there. You just can’t do it and then come to America and ask for money.”

In Congress, Israel is the most sacred of sacred cows. Its lobbyists (who ought to have to register as foreign agents but who seldom do) don’t win every fight and they aren’t almighty or “in control.” But they are very, very powerful, as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee boasts at its web site. So the Israeli government routinely violates international and U.S. law with impunity.

So for Sanders to suggest holding the some $4 billion in direct aid the US gives Israel every year over Prime Minister Netanyahu’s head to make him back off his racist rhetoric and alliances, and to make him stop doing everything he can to forestall the rise of a Palestinian state, is bold indeed. So far, it is not entirely clear that Sanders and other critics of Netanyahu could get the votes in Congress that would be necessary to rein the prime minister in.

Margaret Brennan, the anchor, asked Sanders if he had discussed this issue with the Biden administration. He said he had not. Brennan observed that Biden and his team have been “very careful in criticism of the Netanyahu government.”

Sanders shot back, insisting, “Well, I am not careful about it. I’m embarrassed that – that in Israel, you have a government of that nature right now.”

He said he “may well” introduce a bill to put strings on US aid to Israel. He went on to say that neither Saudi Arabia nor any other country acting in a racist way should expect billions in US aid, paid for by the American taxpayer.

Actually, I don’t think the US gives Saudi Arabia any money, though Washington does sell Riyadh high-tech weaponry.

Sanders added that “if a government is acting in a racist way” and wants billions of dollars from American taxpayers, “I think you say, “Sorry, but it’s not acceptable. You want our money? Fine. This is what you got to do to get it.'”

At Brennan’s prompting, Sanders also reprised his bitter complaints against the preeminent lobby for Israel, AIPAC, which has supported Republican election-deniers but also intervened in Democratic Party primaries to defeat a whole raft of promising young progressives.

Sanders lambasted AIPAC as having become a “corporate PAC” more than it is a pro-Israel group:

“The way I look at AIPAC now, in terms of their political activities – this is not even just a pro-Israel group. This is a corporate PAC, sometimes getting money from Republicans, sometimes supporting extreme right-wing Republicans. So what really upset me very much is that in many of these primaries, we had great candidates, young people, often people of color, and yet AIPAC and other super PACs spending millions of dollars trying to defeat them. And as you may know, I tried to get the Democratic Party to pass a resolution that in Democratic primaries, super PAC money should not be allowed to be used.”

When Brennan pressed him again about the Biden administration’s apparent reluctance to come out against the extremist Israeli government and implied that they are afraid of the Israel lobbies, Bernie replied that “any president” is constrained by our corrupt political system, in which “Big Money plays an enormous role.”

Interestingly, Sanders avoids antisemitic tropes about the power of “Jewish” lobbies by pointing out that AIPAC and other Israel lobbies are not manifestations of Jewish politics but of plutocracy and the corporate sector’s dark money donations. That is, what is wrong with AIPAC is what is wrong with American politics in general.

Sanders is perhaps the first mainstream US politician to speak the truth about the current Netanyahu government and to seek a means of calling it to account for its extremist racism. His interview was potentially a major turning point in US-Israeli relations.

It remains to be seen if he can really hold up billions in aid to Israel, and if he were able to do so, whether that would push Netanyahu to moderate his policies.

Whitehouse said at his site, “We’ve seen this script before, and we cannot allow the fossil fuel industry to once again collect a massive windfall by taking advantage of an international crisis. I propose sending Big Oil’s big windfall back to the hardworking people who paid for it at the gas pump.”

Senator Jeff Merkley (D-OR) makes clear some of how this tax would work to produce a rebate check to consumers: ““We have to cut off the Russian oil sales that are funding Putin’s war crimes in Ukraine. Americans want to put pressure on Putin, but they need help with high gas prices. So let’s tax oil companies’ war profiteering and send gasoline rebate checks to Americans.” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) agreed: “We need to curb profiteering by Big Oil and provide relief to Americans at the gas pump — that starts with ensuring these corporations pay a price when they price gouge, and using the revenue to help American families.”

The senators have their eyes on the future, as well, and seem to want to use the present crisis to leverage a faster transition to renewables. Whitehouse said, “Over the longer term, speeding up the transition to renewables will lower energy costs, insulate consumers from price spikes, and reduce Western nations’ dependence on foreign despots and greedy fossil fuel companies.”

Whitehouse is right that the real answer to both the oil price crisis and to global heating is to move to electric transport, fueled by wind and solar, as soon as possible.

Sen. Michael Bennett (D-CO) links this windfall profits tax to passing clean energy tax credits:

“We need to hold large oil and gas companies accountable and prevent them from using this moment to exploit American consumers. We also urgently need to invest in America’s clean energy economy to cut costs for families and strengthen our energy independence, which we can do by passing the extension and expansion of the clean energy tax credits included in the Finance Committee’s budget package.”

Other progressives backing the bill weighed in. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) observed, “We can no longer allow big oil companies, huge corporations and the billionaire class to use Putin’s murderous invasion of Ukraine and the ongoing pandemic as an excuse to price gouge consumers. It is time to enact a windfall profits tax.”

Sanders clearly sees that spike in gasoline prices as very similar to the spike in consumer commodities across the board, in that he sees price inflation as driven in part by corporate profiteering. Corporations that might fear raising prices lest there be a consumer backlash see crises as a moment where they won’t take the blame but rather external factors– even where they are in fact to blame.

The Covid-19 pandemic initially cut 22 million jobs out of the economy, only a little more than half of which have come back. Unemployment is at record highs for recent decades. Businesses can’t or won’t put all those people back to work, just as businesses did not get us out of the Great Depression. The federal government did that, just as John Maynard Keynes theorized was necessary.

In the past decade, the US has struggled along with the weakest recovery from a major economic downturn in modern history. The white working class has been so badly hit that many of those who never again found employment turned to opioids and died in their fifties and sixties, causing an unprecedented fall in their life expectancy. Some of the tiny minority (10 percent?) of the white workers who voted for Trump after having voted for Obama fell into that category of the never-really-recovered. Sure, some of them voted Trump over racism, but a weak economy promotes racial and ethnic divisions. If you have a pie that keeps getting bigger, you are more willing to share. If your pie is shrinking, you start resenting anyone else slicing off a piece, which reduces your ultimate share. Austerity, the reduction of government expenditure, is inexorably racialized in its effects. The denial of services (when you cut taxes and spending, you are really just cutting government services to people) to the population hits minorities and the less well off harder.

Congress controls the purse strings, and the Republican-dominated Congress pursued austerity from the advent of the astro-turfed and Koch-funded Tea Party in 2010. By 2014, government spending had fallen faster than at any time since the end of the Korean War. An artificial “debt ceiling” kept government spending so low that it hurt the growth of the gross domestic product. Tax cuts for the wealthy under Bush, maintained by Obama to avoid hurting the private sector during crisis, and then massively expanded under Trump, meant that the top 0.1 percent racked up a mountain of profits through monopoly practices, but the bottom half of the economy was starved of any infusion of cash and their real wages were kept from growing. They were the first generation not to get better off than their parents in post WW II America.

The economic crash of 2008-2009 was caused by all the pet projects of the Republican Party, especially deregulation. By letting Wall Street firms sell to their customers derivatives that bundled bad mortgages together, without informing investors of the hazards, the Bush administration set the stage for for the crash. Regulation is actually good. Alan Greenspan, the head of the Federal Reserve, had his world rocked by the peculation inside the big investment firms. I couldn’t imagine, he said, that an executive would steal from his own firm. Greenspan had a limited imagination, as do conservatives in general. Conservatism imagines entrepreneurs as all heroes and those of modest means as lazy couch potatoes. Certainly building a company can be heroic. But it can also be a form of theft, as with the Trumps. By the way, no one has ever legislated any significant financial or regulatory changes that might stop another such crash.

Biden has accepted the findings of a new generation of progressive economists who believe in anti-austerity. The way you make sure that people at the bottom of society economically are able to better themselves is that you use the government to pump money into the bottom half of the economy. Austerity is driven by a fear of inflation. Anti-austerity is driven by a fear of deflation for the working and middle classes.

Actually, the Republicans in Congress who did not vote for the $1.9 trillion Biden-Harris economic stimulus voted under Trump for twice as much stimulus spending. Even they don’t really believe in austerity any more.

Most of the benefit of the Trump tax cuts went to the wealthy and super-wealthy. Most of the benefits of the Biden stimulus are projected to go to workers.

The Biden administration has taken a historic step. But many of the provisions in the bill that passed today are temporary, including expanded the child tax credits. If the really, really big stimulus works well, and if the public is grateful enough and actually votes in the midterms, and if the Republicans fail in their efforts at massive voter suppression, Biden could get the sort of Congress (as with Clinton in 1998), that would allow him to make some of these anti-austerity measures permanent. And that could change the economic trajectory of America back away from growing plutocracy toward a society where workers have a fighting chance to improve their life chances and those of their children.

——–

Bonus Video:

House Passes $1.9 Trillion Covid Relief Bill With Stimulus Checks | Katy Tur | MSNBC

Joe Biden, with regard to positions and entanglements, is not very different from Hillary Clinton, and we know that Trump defeated her by running to her left. He will do the same to Biden, and given Biden’s ties to Wall Street, Big Oil, and the pharmaceutical industry, he will have some powerful ammunition. (Trump is tied to the same forces, but lies about it particularly effectively). Biden is not as easy a mark as H. Clinton, though, since he polls well with the white working class and African-Americans are much more enthusiastic about him than they were about her.

Still, the Democratic Party would benefit from a party platform to the left of where Biden usually comes down, and shifting the party to the left is now the mission of the Sanders movement. The Justice Democrats need to work to insert three key planks into the Democratic Party platform at Milwaukee, using the leverage of Bernie’s bank of delegates.

Platforms matter more than most people realize.

In his dissertation, political scientist Lee Payne looked at party platforms over 25 years and https://books.google.com/books?id=NLXMCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT449&dq=Lee+Payne+party+platforms+80+Percent&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi2yv_7r9roAhVPBs0KHaJtD0IQ6AEwAHoECAUQAg#v=onepage&q=Lee%20Payne%20party%20platforms%2080%20Percent&f=false”>found that their commitments were fulfilled 80 percent of the time.

Plank Number 1:

Bernie Sanders on Medicare for All .

Sanders’ campaign says,

Create a Medicare for All, single-payer, national health insurance program to provide everyone in America with comprehensive health care coverage, free at the point of service.
No networks, no premiums, no deductibles, no copays, no surprise bills. Today, more than 30 million Americans still don’t have health insurance and even more are underinsured. Even for those with insurance, costs are so high that medical bills are the number one cause of bankruptcy in the United States.”

Sanders’ mission has gotten some unforeseen help from the novel coronavirus. As of March 29, there was an 11-point jump in support for single-payer health insurance, that is, for medicare for all. A solid majority of 55 percent of Americans now support it. Support had been that high at the beginning and middle of 2019, but the pro-Big Pharma ads had eroded support until late last month.

One reason for the change is that the current health insurance system ties health care to employment for the most part. For the unemployed, in Republican-ruled states, the state typically has refused to top up the Federal funds for the Affordable Health Care Act or ACA, making it expensive. This step was a way for GOP governors and state houses to sabotage the program.

Now there are going to be a lot of people who lose their health insurance when they lose their jobs. And there are going to be a lot of of unemployed people who can’t afford the ACA in the red states. If we go to 30% unemployment, as some analysts forecast, the fear of voters that they might not be able to their current health care providers is going to be rather outweighed by the prospect that they might lose their job-connected health care anyway.

Plank Number 2:

Bernie Sanders’ Green New Deal

His campaign says the goals are

“Reaching 100 percent renewable energy for electricity and transportation by no later than 2030 and complete decarbonization of the economy by 2050 at latest. Commit to reducing emissions throughout the world, including providing $200 billion to the Green Climate Fund, rejoining the Paris Agreement, and reasserting the United States’ leadership in the global fight against climate change.”

Biden and the corporate Democrats won’t fold easily, but green transportation and electricity are coming anyway. They may as well get aboard. And, the fossil fuel industry looks pretty anemic now that oil prices are halved and half of the coal plants in the world are running at a loss.

Plank Number 3:

Sanders’ tax on extreme wealth (net worth over $32 million), which won’t apply to anyone with less than that.

His campaign says,

“In order to reduce the outrageous level of inequality that exists in America today and to rebuild the disappearing middle class, we must establish an annual tax on the extreme wealth of the top 0.1%. Only applies to net worth of over $32 million and anyone who has a net worth of less than $32 million, would not see their taxes go up at all under this plan. Will raise an estimated $4.35 trillion over the next decade and cut the wealth of billionaires in half over 15 years, which would substantially break up the concentration of wealth and power of this small privileged class. Ensure that the wealthy are not able to evade the tax by implementing strong enforcement policies.”

The great thing about this idea is that it will be easy to depict Trump’s opposition to it as stemming from his own fear of paying his fair share of taxes. Sanders also sees it as structural, since it will reverse the gradual stranglehold that the billionaires have gotten over democracy.

There it is. That’s the struggle for Milwaukee, and then the fall. It is a platform that the Democrats can win on. It is a platform that America can win on.

—–

Bonus video:

Guardian News: “Bernie Sanders ends 2020 presidential campaign: ‘Victory virtually impossible'”

( Waging Nonviolence) – The movement behind the Bernie Sanders campaign has the vision, infrastructure and leadership to address the government’s failed pandemic response.

The eve of Super Tuesday was just 12 days ago, a moment when many of us in the progressive left were feeling the possibility of a strong path for Bernie Sanders’ Democratic nomination. Today, leading up to tonight’s debate, many polls show that we are in a weak position to get a plurality of delegates that can lead us to a Sanders victory at the convention.

However, as of the past week, election conversations have given way to a major national dialogue around the coronavirus. America is experiencing a stark encounter with its health care and economic systems — where its shortcomings are brought to the surface and exacerbated by the inadequate response of the government, as well as the massive amount of needs during a pandemic.

Elections aren’t just fought in the voting booth and Bernie Sanders’ campaign is uniquely positioned to rise to this nationally unprecedented crisis and address the coronavirus pandemic in ways that can manifest concretely the vision of his campaign beyond the electoral arena. 

Together, we can mobilize a people’s movement that can, during this void of leadership, transform its national campaign infrastructure of volunteers towards the development of mutual aid networks and advocate for concrete policy wins during this emergency.

As community organizers, crises like these have propelled us and others to study what we refer to as “moments of the whirlwind,” or moments where the conditions and events are volatile enough that the rules of engagement change. We’ve witnessed similar moments to these in the past, like in 2006 when the “sleeping giant” woke up and millions of immigrants were in the streets responding to proposed anti-immigrant legislation. We also saw this during the financial crisis of 2008 and during Trump’s Muslim ban when there were hundreds of unprecedented airport mobilizations.

The current conditions might allow us to do considerably more things that we weren’t able to do just 11 days ago, when the results of Super Tuesday were announced. 

Repurposing our objectives 

As observers, we know that there have been three major objectives that the Sanders campaign has been seeking to achieve. One is to polarize and bolster support for policies that can benefit the widest range of people and centers the issues of marginalized communities in this country. Another is to elect and endorse candidates like Sanders that support progressive issues across various congressional races in the country like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, and more. And last, but not least, to build a political revolution beyond Bernie’s election, that’s about a movement of people who hold a similar vision for this country and can build a mandate for strong progressive policies.

The difficulty of the moment we’re in is reflected in the fact that these objectives are being tested all at the same time. As we see the diminishing chances of a Sanders election, we begin to see a schism between Democrats largely supporting Bernie Sanders’ agenda while not seeing him as electable as Biden. Meanwhile, due to the coronavirus, the movement is undergoing a tremendous test as people and volunteers who share this progressive vision are unable to go out on the streets to gain more support for Sanders. Even more so, continuing to campaign is contradictory to the reality people are facing.

The volatility and uncertainty that arises from our circumstances obfuscates us from seeing all the possibilities that we actually have to meet our objectives in a variety of ways. It’s important to understand that moments of the whirlwind have the potential to be transformative, where the population is finding themselves at odds with their situation. We need to understand what this moment requires and the new possibilities it opens for all of us. In particular, we see three new possibilities that this crisis presents for the Bernie campaign. 

1. Becoming electable in the vacuum of presidentialism 

Our collective uncertainty and our government’s inadequate and piecemeal responses have led many to take actions that directly and indirectly harm others. In the past week we’ve seen countless stories of people panic shopping and hoarding supplies leaving many who are unable to easily shop to be greeted with empty shelves; low-income families asking for schools to stay open so that their kids can receive a meal; college students being told to move out of their dorms without having a place to go or stay; workers in hospitality sectors being laid off or told to go home without pay. This does not even reflect the effects of the February public charge rule, which punishes immigrants by making them ineligible for legalization if they seek public services.

As organizer and scholar Marshall Ganz has explained, “Leadership is accepting responsibility to create conditions that enable others to achieve shared purpose in the face of uncertainty.” We need a leader who can provide certainty. This does not mean delivering all the answers but rather an understanding of what is taking place and the emotional fortitude to lead us through it. We need a leader whose scope is beyond electoral politics and is transformational enough to, as Ganz said, “engage followers in the risky and often exhilarating work of changing the world.” 

During these troubling times we need to demonstrate leadership, to guide us as a nation through this uncertainty. Who we decide to be in this moment of transition will lead us to who we’ll become in the future. As Malcolm X said, “The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” So this isn’t just about issues on paper; we need Bernie and our campaign to show that there’s a greater moral to the story — to be there for us, to guide us through the difficulty of this time and to remind us that there will be lessons learned. 

If the biggest hindrance to Sanders’ executive trajectory is voters questioning his electability, then we need Sanders to rise up to the occasion and show — in a vacuum of presidentialism — what is possible. Moments where normalcy is questioned are the instances where we seek a resilient, certain and guiding force. Who is better poised than someone who has a track record and vision of a better government approach to our health and economy?

2. Not me. Us: Towards a national culture of solidarity

We are all paying attention to the same issues, going through very similar problems, all at the same time. In our age of social media and perpetual distractions, this is a very special moment. Right now, there are public debates about hoarding versus sharing resources, about the role of our government in providing to its people (within our health care system or the role of schools in providing food to children, etc), and about the role of corporations in how they treat our social welfare (providing paid leave, etc). These are essential debates between “me” and “us,” a key distinction in Bernie’s campaign narrative about the country we want to see. A country that is not just about an individual or a set of wealthy individuals, but about the country as a whole, and especially the most marginalized — like those who will be most impacted by the virus.

From washing our hands to staying at home, people all over the country are experiencing day-to-day the strengths and weaknesses of our collective culture, in every single act of reciprocity and selfishness. In this moment where the elderly and the immunocompromised are most at risk, it’s important for us to understand that our choices are more than just for ourselves. We’re living in a defining moment for our culture. 

This is our time to organize and bring people towards an experience of what Bernie means when he says “democratic socialism.” Whether our return to some form of normalcy takes place in six months, like New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said on “The Daily Show,” or whether it’s a year, this is our time to dramatically increase support for the progressive issues we are fighting for. 

There are so many ways to fight. The 198 methods of nonviolent action that scholar Gene Sharp documented reminds us that even from home we can organize and protest for “us.” We can use social media to polarize more people to join our cause. We can put signs, posters and banners on our windows and homes for paid sick leave, Medicare for All and an eviction moratorium. We can make noise with our pots and pans at our doorfronts at noon every day to remind everyone of the aliveness of our in-home mass protest. We can even chant “Not me. Us.” every night at 8 p.m. to remind our neighbors that we are here for each other. We must liberate ourselves from the thinking that the primaries and elections are the only way to build a movement for “us” so that we can use all the organizing and protest tools at our disposal.

We must embody democratic socialism by creating massive numbers of local mutual aid support networks, taking care of each other, and being the line of defense of our welfare system and our culture of solidarity. What better way for Sanders to demonstrate the slogan “Not me. Us.” than by encouraging his thousands of supporters and campaign volunteers to do just that?

3. The revolution takes on the pandemic 

The greatest test we are facing in our country (and globally) is the strength and support of our social welfare system. A key issue with the virus is the core message of why people should physically distance in order to avoid infection; it is because of the inability of our health care system to respond to a mass contracting of the disease instead of manageable rates over a longer period of time. At the core of this idea is that we as a society must protect and strengthen our health care system.

We are seeing the private sector and the government trying to respond to this crisis, but that won’t be enough without a civic society that can take leadership to protect its social welfare institutions. We have to be a second line of defense.

There are many needs that we need to meet. For example, an elderly couple in Oregon waited in their car for 45 minutes outside of a supermarket because they were too afraid to get out. They asked for help from a young woman nearby who gladly got them their groceries. Now, imagine if our community consciousness was acute enough to notice an elderly couple in their car, to reach out to them, and to ask how to support them in this moment? This is why we need mutual aid networks. 

We need an army of volunteers across the country, in every block and every neighborhood that can create mutual aid networks; that can track each other’s health; support one another with food, resources, information; and to be with each other while physically distanced to show solidarity and emotional strength. We have some examples recently in Siena, Italy and Wuhan, China of neighbors doing just that.

However, as more localized mutual aid networks keep bubbling up, we’ll also need more robust national infrastructure. The infrastructure of our campaign — livestream capabilities, volunteer networks, staff structure, texting technologies, etc. — can provide the resources millions need.

Examples include creating a national emergency database — we already have millions on our list — that can help us address the need of testing and seeing who in our localities has symptoms and needs. Bernie volunteers and staff have built up and demonstrated their capacity to lead for years and have an infrastructure that shouldn’t be in limbo or feel disheartened because of the state of the primaries. 

We have hundreds of thousands of volunteers who can embody the culture of solidarity through creating and supporting their local mutual aid networks. The impact of our involvement en masse, coupled with politicians advocating for changes, will set us up to withstand the storm that is coming. 

Our political revolution has an incredible opportunity because of our infrastructure, culture and leadership to seize this moment. This will also be a test for all of us, to see whether our organization can be nimble enough to generate effectiveness and resiliency beyond the election cycle.

While we are all trying to make sense of the moment of the whirlwind we are in, there are many variables and important decisions ahead of us. The work of believing in a new country and working for it is difficult, and it comes with a huge share of disappointment. 

In times where everything seems to feel closed and unmoving, we must be reminded that there is a real opportunity to push for transformational change right now, that there is still organizing to do, and that we have the resources, the creativity and the will to bring forward this political revolution.

Via Waging Nonviolence

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

ABC News: “‘We’re dealing with a national emergency’: Sanders on coronavirus”

But it was, and Illinois Democrats willing to risk getting the dreaded virus handed Sanders a decisive loss. Together with lopsided routs in Florida and Arizona (Ohio rescheduled its primary) this is, or should be, the end of the Sanders campaign. There are, frankly, no lessons to be learned here, nothing remotely generalizable. This was a race transformed, suddenly and inexplicably, at a critical moment by a terrible deus ex machina that threatens to inflict once-in-a-century damage on human civilization.

Whenever we talk about 2020, it will be in terms of before and after. Before the virus, there was a lively Democratic primary that began with more than 20 hopefuls, with many of the same fault lines, grievances and fears as 2016. After the virus, the remaining centrist candidates quickly and unexpectedly coalesced around former Vice President Joe Biden and dealt Bernie Sanders an almost unthinkable series of defeats in the Super Tuesday contests. Before the virus, this was a race dominated by a seemingly endless debate about health care policy and whether the United States should opt for a fundamental and far-reaching restructuring of its system. After the virus, there was hardly room for even trembling disagreement.

More importantly, as the scale of the Covid-19 crisis has dawned on a terrified public over the past two weeks, it became clear that a decisive majority of Democratic primary voters no longer had much of any interest in this contest. The measures put into place by states and cities, from shutting down restaurants, bars, schools, universities and public places to the shuttering of all major American pro sports, are so far outside the normal scope of imagination, so sudden in their obliteration of everyday life, so unsettling in their lack of even a rudimentary time horizon, as to annihilate all other concerns and considerations.

Over the past three Tuesdays, Democratic voters have made it clear that they want to consolidate around Biden, and they have done so in such staggering numbers as to make a Sanders delegate majority close to a mathematical impossibility. With many states in the coming weeks likely to punt their primary elections to early summer, and with Biden now holding double-digit leads in national primary polling, it’s not just that Sanders has no real path to the nomination. It’s that the park containing the path is closed. The race will be frozen with Biden holding a roughly 300-delegate lead that is insurmountable given the party’s proportional allocations rules even under normal circumstances. That is a shame, because Sanders has better plans for this crisis than Biden, along with a narrative that correctly blames the long-term hollowing out of the public sector and the gross failure of the neoliberal state to prepare us for this moment. We live in a wrecked society now being held courageously together by grossly underpaid grocery store clerks, harried Amazon delivery drivers and determined health care providers. In America, only the doctors and nurses receive their due, and even they are embedded in a tragically warped system that has led us to be nearly defenseless against a crisis that scientists have been warning us about for decades.

You don’t have to think that single-payer health care is the answer to our every problem or believe that a magic wand can be waved to bring it into existence to see that Sanders is the only candidate left in the race capable of seeing this fallen state for what it is and pursuing policies to remedy it. Sanders offers us a vision of society as it might be. Biden extends the nostalgic promise of returning us to a recent past that is already buried much deeper than he and his supporters believe it is. Think of it this way: the political class in this country is so fundamentally broken that they have already wasted precious days debating half-measures that no sensible economist believes will be remotely sufficient to prevent a massive economic collapse.

Nevertheless, it was not meant to be for Bernie this year. There is no sensible argument for staying in the race now that he needs to win more than 63% of the delegates to get to a majority. There will be no repeat of 2008 and 2016, when trailing candidates floated the idea of flipping the so-called ‘superdelegates’ at the convention and reversing the popular will of the voters. Due in large part to pressure from the Sanders campaign itself, the DNC changed the rules so that superdelegates can’t vote on the first ballot. There isn’t going to be a second one, so there will be no one inside the party left to persuade.

A zombie campaign premised on amassing delegates to influence the party’s platform at the convention is not worth running and is certainly not going to inspire the kind of donations he would need to compete in the remaining states. The platform itself is a hollow prize anyway. No one reads or cares about it, the nominee isn’t bound by it and before the ink is dry, Biden and his team will have taken over the party.

More than ever, Sanders is actually needed as a progressive leader in the Senate, to help shape the coming bailouts and spending packages in a more humane direction. He himself seemed to acknowledge this obliquely yesterday, when he snapped at a reporter asking whether he would drop out: “”I’m dealing with a f—ing global crisis,” he told CNN”s Manu Raju. “Right now, I’m trying to do my best to make sure that we don’t have an economic meltdown and that people don’t die. Is that enough for you to keep me busy for today?”

The best thing Sanders can do for the American people is dedicate himself to pushing the coming bailouts and stimulus packages and emergency response plans in as progressive direction as possible from his influential perch in the Senate. He’ll be much less effective at that if he’s halfheartedly campaigning to compete in primaries that might not happen for months. And as much as it comes as a disappointment to a progressive movement that just weeks ago seemed to be on the verge of capturing the Democratic Party’s nomination, this thing is over and the sooner Biden can start fundraising for the general election the better. He is not the ideal vehicle to lead the party through a historic crisis, but Donald Trump has proven again and again during this unfolding ordeal that there is an abyss where the president should be, a vacuum of moral, political and administrative leadership that may get hundreds of thousands or even millions of people killed. Fighting a two-front war against the president and the virus is enough. The third front – the primary – needs to be shut down, and progressives need to lick their wounds and hope there is something left of society to fight for in 2024.

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Bonus video added by Informed Comment:

Sanders says coronavirus crisis highlights dysfunction of health care system | ABC News