Is there another outsider who yanked an unwilling political party further in his or her ideological direction in a shorter period of time than Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)? I mean, other than Donald Trump.
Back when he was polling in single digits at the outset of the 2016 presidential primary, Sanders and his position of being against every single international trade agreement since World War II on the inaccurate grounds that they facilitate a "race to the bottom" were still considered outliers within the Democratic Party. By October 2015 his unlikely polling surge helped persuade consensus front-runner Hillary Clinton to
downgrade her opinion on the Trans-Pacific Partnership from "gold standard" to junk.
Where are the Democrats now? "It's a pretty safe bet that no candidate is going to campaign as a free trader in the 2020 Democratic primary, setting up the potential for a large-scale realignment on a major policy issue for the party,"
Voxconcluded this week.
adopted by Clinton, despite being
warned against doing so by the same liberal economist whose research is most often cited by proponents — was introduced in a House bill just
last month.
Back when the 2016 primary was at its testiest, Clinton's favorite
critique of the senator's proposals, particularly his "Medicare for all" plan, was that "the numbers just don't add up." This year? Good luck finding a Democratic candidate who doesn't back Medicare for all, at least as a feel-good
slogan.
Maybe it took the election of an honest-to-God fabulist as president, but Democrats not named Amy
Klobuchar seem to be divorcing themselves from any sense of real-world constraints on their apparently boundless aspirations. "Now it is time to complete that revolution," Sanders told his supporters Tuesday as he announced another shot at the presidency. The word choice wasn't accidental.
