Democrats’ ‘Big Ideas’ May Re-Elect President Trump

Photo: brendan smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

From Medicare for All to the Green New Deal, candidates work hard to repel swing voters.

‘I get a little tired of Democrats afraid of big ideas,” Sen. Bernie Sanders said in Tuesday’s debate. But Democrats will lose in 2020 if enough Americans believe those “big ideas” threaten their families, communities, values and pocketbooks. Talk of “political revolution” may rev up democratic socialists like Bernie, but for many ordinary Americans, it’s too much and too radical.

The most obvious example is Mr. Sanders’s Medicare for All. Co-sponsored by four other presidential hopefuls—Sens. Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris and Elizabeth Warren—it would make it “unlawful” for companies to provide employees health insurance or for private insurers to sell coverage that “duplicates” benefits of a new government health program.

It’s laughable to think that the nearly 170 million Americans who have private coverage would be excited about losing their plans and their doctors. Nor are they eager to lose control over their health decisions. Add the long wait lists for appointments and procedures common to single-payer health-care systems and the huge middle-class tax increase needed to pay for Medicare for All’s $32 trillion price tag, and it’s easy to see why swing voters will be horrified if Mr. Sanders’s plan is part of the 2020 Democratic platform. 

Cory Booker, Kamala Harris and Kirsten Gillibrand

At least one candidate who initially supported abolishing employer-provided health insurance now realizes that was a mistake. Ms. Harris released her own plan Monday, rejecting Mr. Sanders’s approach and saying she favors a role for private insurance.

But she’s being duplicitous. While Mr. Sanders phases out private insurance in four years, Ms. Harris has a 10-year transition during which her new government program would “automatically enroll newborns and the uninsured.” With the deadline looming, many companies would end coverage earlier, leaving employees to be automatically enrolled into the new single-payer program. That’s what counts for moderation these days—a BernieCare that kills employer-provided health insurance a little more slowly.

Read the rest from the WSJ HERE.

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