[rad-green] Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Radical —He’s a Pragmatist Who Fights to Un-rig the Sys tem

*https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/12/bernie-sanders-isnt-radical-hes-pragmatist-who-fights-un-rig-system
<https://www.commondreams.org/views/2020/02/12/bernie-sanders-isnt-radical-hes-pragmatist-who-fights-un-rig-system>Market
Watch             February 12, 2020Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Radical—He’s a
Pragmatist Who Fights to Un-rig the SystemSanders would use both markets
and government to reverse the upward redistribution of income to the
already rich.by Mark Weisbrot*

[image: Practical Bernie Sanders voted for Obamacare, but he didn’t give up
on his long-term goal of universal health care. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty
Images)]

*Practical Bernie Sanders voted for Obamacare, but he didn’t give up on his
long-term goal of universal health care. (Photo: Mark Wilson/Getty Images)*

As Bernie Sanders continues to increase his standing in the Democratic
primary, and his opponents in both parties feel the pain, there is an
effort to paint him as an extremist of some sort. Someone who might even
lose to Trump because of this alleged “radicalism.” But it’s not that easy
to make the case on the basis of facts.

He has a 40-year track record as a politician. The things he is saying now
are mostly what he has shouted from the mountain tops for pretty much the
whole time. The main difference is that now, other Democratic politicians
have joined him: on a $15 minimum wage, student-debt relief, free tuition
at public universities, expanding Social Security, reducing income
inequality, and some even on Medicare for All.

His actions speak even more consistently than his words: he understands
that politics is about compromise. He fights hard for what he has promised
to voters, but then takes the best deal he can win if it will advance the
ball down the field, and prepares to fight again the next day.

That’s why he supported Obamacare when it was the best deal on the
table—expanding
insurance coverage to 20 million Americans,
<https://www.cbpp.org/research/health/chart-book-accomplishments-of-affordable-care-act>
without
the life-threatening exclusions for "pre-existing conditions." This despite
the fact that Obamacare was still quite a distance from Medicare for
All—"health care as a human right"—that had been his passion and signature
issue for decades.

But he is a “socialist,” his opponents cry, leaving out the first part of
the term “democratic socialist” that Sanders always uses when this issue is
discussed. There is much room to induce confusion here because the term
“socialist,” in English, has a number of different definitions that have
all become common usage over the years.

It can be used to mean anything from “communist,” as in the former Soviet
Union, to the European social democratic or socialist parties that have
governed for much of the past 70 years in countries such as France,
Germany, Spain, and the U.K., not to mention the Scandinavian countries.

It should be clear to anyone who is not trying to frighten voters that
Sanders is a social democrat of the latter, European variety. There will be
no U.S. government takeover of the means of production under a Sanders
administration.

The biggest expansion in government will be in public funding of health
insurance. Like traditional Medicare, where less than 2% of expenses are
administrative costs
<https://www.cms.gov/Research-Statistics-Data-and-Systems/Statistics-Trends-and-Reports/ReportsTrustFunds/Downloads/TR2019.pdf>,
public health insurance will be much more efficient than the current six
times as much spent by the private insurance industry. And we won’t have 8
million people falling into poverty every year
<https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-268.pdf>due
to medical expenses, or worse, tens of thousands actually dying because of
lack of access to affordable health care.

Sanders’ program is targeted at correcting a very harmful transformation of
the U.S. economy that has taken place over the past 40 years.

Perhaps this normalization of the radical changes of the past few decades
is why some commentators perceive Bernie’s program—designed to reverse this
damage—as "radical."

Unlike the first three decades after World War II, when income gains were
broadly shared as the economy grew, most of the increase in income has gone
to those who already had much more than their share. Since 1993, for
example, the top 1% of families captured an astounding 48% of the growth in
this country’s income.

No wonder so many Americans feel like the system is rigged against them.
<https://deanbaker.net/books/rigged.htm>

That right-wing transformation was mostly launched by the Reagan team, but
it came to be accepted, and even deepened by some liberal political leaders
as well. Perhaps this normalization of the radical changes of the past few
decades is why some commentators perceive Bernie’s program—designed to
reverse this damage—as "radical."

Here it is important to note that the fight over this right-wing
transformation has never been so much about “the market” versus “the
state.” Almost every economy in the world is a mixture of both.

But the Reagan “revolution” and the counter-reforms that followed (e.g.,
the WTO, NAFTA, financial deregulation, permanent normal trade relations
with China, anti-labor legislation and practices) were not so much about
changing the relative weight of market and government.

Rather what changed most is that *both* markets and government were
harnessed vastly more to redistribute income and wealth upward. The result
is an America that is unique among high-income countries in the percentage
of people who are employed full-time and yet struggling to get by, not to
mention the more than 10 million children in poverty
<https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/publications/2019/demo/p60-268.pdf>and
more than half a million homeless people.

Sanders, in his reform program, seeks to use both markets and government to
reverse this massive upward redistribution of income and wealth.

Of course, government has to take the lead with public investment where
private investment would not be forthcoming—as in the transformation of
some energy infrastructure to reduce carbon emissions.

But other important parts of Sanders’ program move the economy away from
government toward more market-based solutions: for example, reducing the
role of government-granted-and-regulated patent monopolies in driving up
the price of pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and health-care costs. Or
breaking up other monopolies in favor of more market competition, in the
technology and financial sectors.

Sanders also favors a less interventionist role for the Federal Reserve in
the labor market, as the Fed has triggered almost all U.S. recessions since
the end of World War II (except for the last two) by raising interest rates
when this was unnecessary.

And he has led the way to reduce one of the most powerful and destructive
abuses that our government has unleashed upon Americans and the world: the
terrible, unnecessary, “forever wars” that most Americans now reject. Some
of his best allies in this fight have been conservative Republicans who are
skeptical of this aspect of “big government”—as has been true in the
historic fight to stop U.S. military participation in Saudi Arabia’s
genocidal war in Yemen.

In short, Sanders is much more pragmatic and less ideological than his
opponents would like to admit. But we can expect to hear more—from various
quarters—of this labeling him as a "radical," if he continues to gain on
his competitors in the Democratic primary.

Mark Weisbrot <http://www.commondreams.org/author/mark-weisbrot> is
Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
<http://www.cepr.net/> (CEPR), in Washington, DC. He is also president of Just
Foreign Policy <http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/>. He is co-author, with
Dean Baker, of *Social Security: The Phony Crisis
<https://www.amazon.com/dp/0226035468?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0226035468&adid=0RK4TFFYV9E33FTMWEEK&>*.
E-mail Mark: [email protected]

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