Heading for the debate stage June 26, 10 Democrats will slam 73-year-old President Donald Trump, perhaps the only thing they agree on. On two consecutive nights, 20 of the 24 Democrat presidential candidates will get their chance to rip Trump and present their views on a variety to topics, including heath care, climate change, immigration, trade, foreign policy, race policies and top priorities. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s chief Democrat rival in 2016, has proposed a Medicare-for-all plan that would virtually eliminate private health insurance in the United States. While there’s some candidates that agree with Bernie, most Democrats, like Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), disagree, believing there’s a place in U.S. health care system for private insurance, despite having no problem with a public option like Medicare-for-all.
Sanders won’t speak until Thursday night, together with other front-runners like Warren and former VP Joe Biden (D-Del.), who’s set himself up as the moderate alternative. Mainstream Democrats have recently branded Sanders as an “existential threat” to the Democrat Party, believing his ideas would be too radical for the general electorate. Democrats dealt with Bernie harshly in 2016 when he was considered a threat to Hillary. This year, Democrats see Sanders as a threat to Biden, whose moderate views hope to appeal to independent voters heading into the general election. While it’s premature to write Bernie off, Party insiders have done the same thing in 2019, branding Bernie a threat to the White House. Reliable polls in 2016 indicated that Bernie would have beaten Trump handily in the general election. Yet Party elders sabotaged Bernie’s 2016 campaign.
Former Democratic National Committee Chief Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz (D-Fl.) was fired by the DNC for undermining Bernie’s campaign to help Hillary win the nomination. Bernie finds himself in the same dilemma, with Party insiders branding him as an “existential threat” to the Party’s chances of beating Trump in 2020. Truth be told, no one knows that Biden would fair any better than Bernie, whose lock on young voters continues to bedevil the Party. Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) both oppose Sander’s Medicare-for-all plan, believing it would decimate private heath care markets. Bernie has no problem with Medicare-for-all, believing the average subscriber would get better benefits at a cost-sensitive price than the current for-profit health care system. Opponents to Medicare-for-all believe it would create massive delivery delays.
Trump pulled out of the Paris Climate Agreement June 1, 2017, rejecting former President Barack Obama’s commitment, insisting the U.S. shouldered too high of a burden. Trump wanted the U.S. to continue reducing carbon emissions but rejected the idea that it must take a disproportionately high share of the costs to comply with the international climate accord. Many Democrat candidates feel inclined to back Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal, radically reducing carbon dioxide emissions. With all the restrictions needed to implement the Green New Deal, Republicans argue it would bankrupt the country, without any guarantees it would reduce carbon pollution. Democrats want to rejoin the Paris Climate Accord and back the Green New Deal no matter how costly. Democrats all agree that Trump’s part to the big-polluters’s industry to destroy the environment.
When it comes to immigration, Democrats oppose Trump’s policy to clamp down on the border. Without saying it, Democrats have an open border policy, unwilling to do the heavy lifting to comply with today’s immigration laws. Seeking a path to citizenship and grand-fathering in so-called “dreamers,” Democrats slam Trump for creating deplorable conditions on the Mexican border, including inhumane policies that separate children from their families. Democrats oppose Trump’s border fences but have no answer how they plan to enforce existing border laws. Democrats also oppose Trump’s trade policies, including ending the Clinton-era North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA]. Trump has renegotiated the NAFTA that gives the U.S. more favorable terms for a new trade agreement. Trump has paved the way for a better fair-trade deal, rejecting past deals as unfavorable to the U.S.
Trump’s roundly criticized by Democrats for “antagonizing” Iran, when, in fact, Iran’s been out-of-compliance with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [JCPOA] AKA the “Iranian Nuke Deal,” allowing Iran to run-a-muck waging proxy war against Saudi Arabia. Democrats mostly blame Trump for canceling the Iranian Nuke Deal, creating today’s tensions in the Persian Gulf that led to Iran downing a Global Hawk 4A surveillance plane June 30. While Trump did not respond militarily, he slapped Iran with more draconic sanctions, ratcheting up Mideast tensions. Democrats back the JCPOA that Trump rejected due to Iran’s lack of compliance. When it comes to race relations, Democrats back programs providing reparations to African Americans. Democrats blame Trump for the income-gap between races, the working class and the billionaire class, as Bernie likes to call it.
