Tag Archives: Bernie Sanders

2020 General Election, Democrats, Donald Trump

Day one of DNC: Sound the alarm and urge Americans to “Vote for joe Biden like our lives depend on it.”

Kristin Urquiza, Bernie Sanders, and Michelle Obama were among the speakers at the first night of the Democratic National Convention.

Kristin Urquiza, who lost her father to COVID-19, addressed Donald Trump’s most deadly failure (tragically ongoing) last night.

Her remarks in full [emphasis added]:

I’m Kristin Urquiza. I’m one of the many who have lost a loved one to COVID. My dad, Mark Anthony Urquiza, should be here today, but he isn’t. He had faith in Donald Trump. He voted for him, listened to him, believed him and his mouthpieces when they said that coronavirus was under control and going to disappear, that it was OK to end social distancing rules before it was safe, and that if you had no underlying health conditions you’d probably be fine.

So in late May, after the stay-at-home order was lifted in Arizona, my dad went to a karaoke bar with his friends. A few weeks later he was put on a ventilator, and after five agonizing days he died alone, in the I.C.U., with a nurse holding his hand. My dad was a healthy 65-year-old. His only pre-existing condition was trusting Donald Trump — and for that he paid with his life.

I am not alone. Once I told my story, a lot of people reached out to me to share theirs. They asked me to help keep the communities safe, especially communities of color, which have been disproportionately affected. They asked me, a normal person, to help, because Donald Trump won’t. The coronavirus has made it clear that there are two Americas: The America that Donald Trump lives in and the America that my father died in. Enough is enough. Donald Trump may not have caused the coronavirus, but his dishonesty and his irresponsible actions made it so much worse.

We need a leader who has a national, coordinated, data-driven response to stop this pandemic from claiming more lives and to safely reopen the country. We need a leader who will step in on day one and do his job: to care.

One of the last things that my father said to me was that he felt betrayed by the likes of Donald Trump. And so when I cast my vote for Joe Biden, I will do it for my dad.

Video NBC News; transcript: NPR.

Bernie Sanders also took Trump to task for his failures to crush the coronavirus (“Nero fiddled while Rome burned; Trump golfs.”) and the economic crisis these failures have brought our country. The Senator focused as well on the unprecedented threat of authoritarianism Trump has brought to our country:

“At its most basic, this election is about preserving our democracy. During this president’s term, the unthinkable has become normal. He has tried to prevent people from voting, undermined the U.S. Postal Service, deployed the military and federal agents against peaceful protesters, threatened to delay the election and suggested that he will not leave office if he loses. This is not normal, and we must never treat it like it is. Under this administration, authoritarianism has taken root in our country. I and my family, and many of yours, know the insidious way authoritarianism destroys democracy, decency and humanity. As long as I am here, I will work with progressives, with moderates, and, yes, with conservatives to preserve this nation from a threat that so many of our heroes fought and died to defeat.”

Video NBC News; transcript CNN.

Michelle Obama offered a strategy for change [emphasis added to excerpted remarks]:

So what do we do now? What’s our strategy? Over the past four years, a lot of people have asked me, “When others are going so low, does going high still really work?” My answer: going high is the only thing that works, because when we go low, when we use those same tactics of degrading and dehumanizing others, we just become part of the ugly noise that’s drowning out everything else. We degrade ourselves. We degrade the very causes for which we fight.

But let’s be clear: going high does not mean putting on a smile and saying nice things when confronted by viciousness and cruelty. Going high means taking the harder path. It means scraping and clawing our way to that mountain top. Going high means standing fierce against hatred while remembering that we are one nation under God, and if we want to survive, we’ve got to find a way to live together and work together across our differences.

And going high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold hard truth.

So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can. Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is.

Now, I understand that my message won’t be heard by some people. We live in a nation that is deeply divided, and I am a Black woman speaking at the Democratic Convention. But enough of you know me by now. You know that I tell you exactly what I’m feeling. You know I hate politics. But you also know that I care about this nation. You know how much I care about all of our children.

So if you take one thing from my words tonight, it is this: if you think things cannot possibly get worse, trust me, they can; and they will if we don’t make a change in this election. If we have any hope of ending this chaos, we have got to vote for Joe Biden like our lives depend on it.

…

Joe Biden wants all of our kids to go to a good school, see a doctor when they’re sick, live on a healthy planet. And he’s got plans to make all of that happen. Joe Biden wants all of our kids, no matter what they look like, to be able to walk out the door without worrying about being harassed or arrested or killed. He wants all of our kids to be able to go to a movie or a math class without being afraid of getting shot. He wants all our kids to grow up with leaders who won’t just serve themselves and their wealthy peers but will provide a safety net for people facing hard times.

And if we want a chance to pursue any of these goals, any of these most basic requirements for a functioning society,These tactics are not new.

But this is not the time to withhold our votes in protest or play games with candidates who have no chance of winning. We have got to vote like we did in 2008 and 2012. We’ve got to show up with the same level of passion and hope for Joe Biden. We’ve got to vote early, in person if we can. We’ve got to request our mail-in ballots right now, tonight, and send them back immediately and follow-up to make sure they’re received. And then, make sure our friends and families do the same.

We have got to grab our comfortable shoes, put on our masks, pack a brown bag dinner and maybe breakfast too, because we’ve got to be willing to stand in line all night if we have to.

Look, we have already sacrificed so much this year. So many of you are already going that extra mile. Even when you’re exhausted, you’re mustering up unimaginable courage to put on those scrubs and give our loved ones a fighting chance. Even when you’re anxious, you’re delivering those packages, stocking those shelves, and doing all that essential work so that all of us can keep moving forward.

Even when it all feels so overwhelming, working parents are somehow piecing it all together without child care. Teachers are getting creative so that our kids can still learn and grow. Our young people are desperately fighting to pursue their dreams.

And when the horrors of systemic racism shook our country and our consciences, millions of Americans of every age, every background rose up to march for each other, crying out for justice and progress.

This is who we still are: compassionate, resilient, decent people whose fortunes are bound up with one another. And it is well past time for our leaders to once again reflect our truth.

So, it is up to us to add our voices and our votes to the course of history, echoing heroes like John Lewis who said, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something.” That is the truest form of empathy: not just feeling, but doing; not just for ourselves or our kids, but for everyone, for all our kids.

And if we want to keep the possibility of progress alive in our time, if we want to be able to look our children in the eye after this election, we have got to reassert our place in American history. And we have got to do everything we can to elect my friend, Joe Biden, as the next president of the United States.

Thank you all. God bless.

(Image of host Eva Longoria from the Democratic Party.)

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

Thoughts on the Democratic primary in the aftermath of Super Tuesday

After Super Tuesday, Joe Biden has pushed Bernie Sanders from his position as frontrunner. With everyone else out of the way, Bloomberg especially, it’s a two-man race for the Democratic nomination.

In 2016, I initially gave Sanders a pass when he continued campaigning even after it was obvious he had no chance of beating Hillary Clinton. After all, one of his goals was to amass enough delegates that he could influence the party platform and push it to the left. To do that, he had to keep competing.

But he’s done that. – Kevin Drum

Agreed. I was indulgent of Sanders’ protracted 2016 primary campaign because of my confidence that Hillary Clinton would win in November. If Sanders falters this time, let’s hope the senator promptly concedes and gets behind the Democratic nominee.

Perhaps the starkest symbol of Sanders’s limitations last night was the resurgence of a problem that severely damaged him in 2016: widespread resistance from primary voters who self-identify as Democrats (as opposed to independents). . . .

The Super Tuesday exit polls showed Biden beating Sanders among self-identified Democrats by about 30 percentage points in both Virginia and North Carolina, about 25 points in Oklahoma, 20 points in Tennessee, and nearly 50 in Alabama. Sanders was more competitive among Democratic partisans in the New England states of Massachusetts and Maine. But the overall pattern was unmistakable.

His collapse among Democratic partisans came after recent full-throated attacks on “the Democratic establishment” in his rallies and media appearances. Sanders has often sounded more as if he believes he’s leading his movement in a hostile takeover of the party than a merger with it. – Ronald Brownstein

Yeah. Democrats can’t resist complaining about the Democratic Party – but the millions of Democratic voters are a diverse bunch. Our communities are as diverse as we are. We don’t always agree. That’s the nature of a broad coalition under a big tent. Most Democrats, in the election of our lives, are seeking someone to unify us, not scold us – or our leaders. Attacking the Democratic establishment is a discordant rallying cry, especially from someone who regards himself as standing outside the tent.

When the campaign began, I had a fervent wish not to have to vote for an old white guy. It wasn’t always clear to me, if I didn’t get my wish, whether a Biden or a Sanders nomination would be the most disappointing.

From my vantage point today, Biden looks like the best bet to help Democrats boot out Trump and take back the Senate. Joe Biden has significant vulnerabilities, including looking and acting like a not especially vibrant 77-year-old; a continuing career of gaffes, verbal tangents, and visibly losing his train of thought; and an inability, thus far, to explain simply and coherently why the Hunter, Burisma, and Ukraine tales hammered by Republicans aren’t on a par with Trump’s corruption. But he is one of us, the last one standing (since Sanders chooses to stand apart from us), and it’s us against them.

That said, yesterday I cast a ballot – with no expectations that she would hit 15% in California – for Elizabeth Warren. Here’s hoping this terrific senator returns to Washington next year to a chamber with a Democratic majority. And, give her credit, Warren had the starring role in taking down Mike Bloomberg and his obscene $600,000,000+ campaign (which, not incidentally, provided a critical assist in the resurrection of the Biden campaign).

L.A. County’s new “ballot marking device” worked like a charm (though the process of checking in voters was very, very slow).
Casting a ballot for Elizabeth Warren in March 2020 primary election.

(Image of Joe Biden from his twitter page.)

2020 Democratic Primary

Democrats seek a nominee to take on Trump: thoughts on the state of the race

Bernie Sanders romped in Nevada. Some observations on the contest:

Bernie Sanders

I see no reason to reject the conventional wisdom that Bernie Sanders is the clear frontrunner, with ample resources to compete on Super Tuesday and no rivals well positioned at this stage to overtake him. Absent Biden (or another rival) achieving a lopsided takedown of Sanders in South Carolina, this is unlikely to change.

Sanders’ success, thus far, proves the adage that practice makes perfect. He did this in 2016. He has built an ardent following, a formidable campaign organization, an impressive online donor base, and – even with an intervening heart attack – he has hardly missed a beat in the 2020 race.

“I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”

This is a central theme, not always articulated so plainly, of the Sanders campaign. The theme rubs many grassroots voters (including this blogger) – who embrace the Democratic Party and have more faith in Nancy Pelosi, Adam Schiff, and other establishment Democrats (even James Carville), than we have in the junior senator from Vermont – the wrong way. But if Sanders wins the nomination, and if Democrats are prepared to rally ’round their nominee (as I am), this stance is likely to serve him well.

Joe Biden

He wasn’t impressive in his first two runs for the Democratic nomination. He clearly has lost more than a step or two at age 77. I didn’t buy the “Comeback Kid” shout on the night of the Nevada caucuses. Biden had better hope for an impressive performance in South Carolina or his political swan song will be that he smothered the prospects of several 2020 primary competitors positioned ideologically near him, who might have been stronger presences on the debate stage and the campaign trail than the former VP has been.

Pete Buttigieg

The former mayor of South Bend (along with numerous Republican candidates) has started running TV ads that go after Sanders by name. More emphasis on term limits and bashing (with Bernie!) the Washington establishment won’t win the day, so it’s time to go negative. Unless Buttigieg wins or finishes a strong second in South Carolina, it’s hard to envisage him with much chance of catching Sanders at this stage.

Mike Bloomberg

“He has now spent more than half a billion dollars since late November, propelling a rapid ascent in the polls.” Wow.

Mark Green relates his experience running against Bloomberg:

Three weeks before the New York mayoral election in November of 2001, I got a call from Mark Mellman, the pollster working on my race against Michael Bloomberg.

“Well, I have good and bad news. The good news is that I’ve never had a client 20 points ahead this late in a campaign who lost. The bad news is that Bloomberg is spending a million dollars a day — not a month but a day — and gaining a point a day.” I quickly did the math and shuddered.

Green lost 50% to 48%.

I’m skeptical that even with his billions, Bloomberg can secure the 2020 nomination from Democratic voters. But his immense stash is hard to contemplate. Will unlimited resources enable the mayor to block Sanders’ rise? Will ‘centrist’ establishment Democrats move to the billionaire’s corner and bring voters with them? I don’t think so, but I could be wrong.

Elizabeth Warren

With all her assets, my favorite candidate to take on Trump has been overtaken by others in the field. Amy Klobuchar has experienced a similar fate.

Not the year of the woman – at least not at the top of the ticket

Which brings me, as someone convinced that a woman could beat Trump in November, to a galling (albeit unprovable) conclusion. Democrats were snake bitten by Clinton’s crash in 2016. To the extent that Warren’s gender has harmed her in the primary, this can be laid at the feet of Democratic voters – spooked by Trump – fearful of misogyny, sexism, and intractable gendered traditionalism among the broader electorate – other voters – who might consider voting for a Democrat with a Y chromosome. If you’re convinced that the strongest candidate happens to be female, you must agree (as Jimmy Carter reminded us), life is not fair.

Democrats in disarray

Edward-Isaac Dovere, writing in the Atlantic, suggests that the Democratic establishment is desperate to stop Sanders, though he found few folks, apparently, saying so aloud. He quotes a vice president at Third Way, which opposes a Sanders nomination, and a lieutenant governor of California (who few Californians could name), who supports Buttigieg, plus someone at Emily’s List, which continues to support Warren and Klobuchar, the women still in the race. This is pretty weak tea. I guess most of the heavy hitters are in hiding.

Dovere writes, “This summer, party leaders may be forced to accept the nomination of a man who’s not officially a member of the party, who won’t have won a majority of primary voters, and whose agenda is popular with his progressive base but doesn’t have as much support with Democrats as a whole.” The link is to a Kaiser Family Foundation survey showing that 77% of Democrats support Sanders’ signature issue, Medicare for All. Yes, the public option is even more popular and support for Medicare for All diminishes when realistic details are added to the question, but – like Obamacare and the individual mandate – that’s the nature of public policy and public opinion.

Let’s acknowledge: democratic socialism and revolution aren’t popular Democratic campaign themes. But Sanders – in contrast to Hillary Clinton in 2016 – has a compelling economic message that resonates with many voters, especially younger voters who have reason to believe that the system hasn’t worked well for them.

The Democratic Party didn’t have to allow Sanders to enter the Democratic primary in 2016. The man is a free agent with virtually no loyalty to the party. But it did so. I welcomed Sanders’ challenge at the time (though I never entertained the idea of voting for him) because I thought he would make Clinton a stronger candidate and, in particular, to prompt her to sharpen her economic message to middle- and working-class Americans.

In retrospect, I couldn’t have been more wrong. I don’t think her campaign learned a thing from Sanders’ challenge. And, I suspect that a comfortable life with Bill Clinton, who has cashed in as a past president and advanced into the ranks of the one-percent, made it tough for Hillary to recognize the measure of economic angst and anger directed toward the one-percenters who crashed the economy, escaped justice, and continue to thrive.

Sanders – although he is a millionaire with three houses – is speaking to those voters.

Can Democrats unify to beat Trump?

Defeating a president presiding over a continuing economic expansion won’t be easy. Sanders continues to poll well against Trump, but it’s early. I’m convinced that Sanders wouldn’t be the strongest possible contender this fall. But in a base election, I believe any Democratic nominee stands a fighting chance. The country is split down the middle. Democrats are highly motivated to end Trump’s reign.

Will Sanders at the top of the ticket harm the prospects of Democrats taking back the Senate? Probably. He will almost certainly make life more difficult for many down-ballot Democrats. So it is up to the party and the candidate to do their best to overcome this disadvantage.

Sanders has been – as Matt Yglesias has argued – an effective legislator, “dramatically more pragmatic than his record,” not a kook. One hopes, if he wins the nomination, he runs a savvy, pragmatic general election campaign. With Sanders at the top of the ticket, the Democrats will have a strong case to make for creating an economy that works for everyone, not just the millionaires and billionaires.

Meanwhile, Democratic Senate and House candidates can run away from Sanders (as many ran away from Nancy Pelosi in 2018) if they must. They can embrace the strongest elements of his agenda, a Democratic agenda, while promising that they’ll never vote to take away employer-based health care. And note that the leadership of the Culinary Workers Union, which brought its members a superb health care plan – offering 24-hour clinics with no deductibles and modest co-pays, coverage for dental care, eye care, and prescription drugs, while pushing out middlemen and profit centers – opposed Sanders in Nevada. Much of the membership disagreed.

Sanders put together a diverse winning coalition in Nevada. If he can keep this up, he will be the Democrat nominee.

(Image of Sunday, February 23, 2020 Los Angeles Times with Mike Bloomberg front-page wraparound ad.)

Democrats, Donald Trump, Income Inequality

The Howard Schultz campaign is already helping Donald Trump

“After this week’s CNN town hall, it’s more and more clear that any money Howard Schultz might spend on an independent presidential bid would function as an in-kind campaign contribution to Donald Trump.” – Ronald Brownstein

“To win a majority of electoral college votes, which Schultz says would be his goal, he would have to ultimately replace the Democratic nominee as the favored choice of voters who do not want Trump to win a second term.” – Michael Scherer

Schultz has praised the “thoughtful analysis” of a conservative commentator who fears the Democrats will nominate a “hard-left” candidate and – in the course of the column – demeans Kamala Harris (“shrill … quasi-socialist promising pie in the sky”), Elizabeth Warren (“Fauxcahontas … playing a game of socialist one-upmanship”), and “supposedly centrist” Joe Biden. The critic also name-checks Bernie Sanders and, of course, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. 

Schultz, who claims to be a “lifelong Democrat” – but not a very attentive one (“Schultz voted in just 11 of 38 elections dating back to 2005”), took back the praise he had offered after folks actually read the “thoughtful analysis” he was promoting;  he deleted the tweet when he was asked about it by the Washington Post, and blamed someone else for posting the link on his personal Twitter account.

Nonetheless, he embraces the conservative views expressed in the deleted column. It’s the “hard-left,” “quasi-socialist” Democrats that Schultz fears and, most scary and objectionable of all, the proposal (broached by conservatives’ favorite new Democratic Member of Congress, Ocasio-Cortez) to raise the marginal tax rate for incomes over $10 million to 70% (the level in the United States in 1980).

When asked at his CNN Town Hall what he thinks his personal income tax rate – as a billionaire – should be, Schutz concedes that he “should pay more taxes,” but tap dances for more than a minute (with platitudes about corporate taxes, the Republican tax bill, comprehensive tax reform, as well as personal income tax rates for millionaires) without giving an answer, at which point the moderator Poppy Harlow reminds him of the question and asks, “Give me a sense. Are you talking about you should pay 2% higher? Ten percent higher, twenty percent higher federal income tax?”

He stammers and says, “I don’t – Poppy, I don’t know what the number is….”

“Ballpark it for people,” she asks.

He won’t. He finally gets to the heart of his concern, “I think that what’s being proposed at 70% is a punitive number. And I think there are better ways to do this.”

Better ways. In other words, instead of significant increases in the personal tax rates of billionaires, we should seek revenue increases somewhere else.

Brownstein notes that on issue after issue, Schultz’s positions align with Democrats, while alienating Trump’s Republican base.

“To obscure his tilt toward the Democrats on almost all issues, Schultz has quickly settled on a strategy of loudly criticizing ideas popular on the party’s far-left flank.”

Brownstein perceives in Schultz’s strategy echoes of the (now defunct) centrist group, the Democratic Leadership Council, which Bill Clinton embraced in his trek to the White House.  But there’s a huge difference in the two strategies. The DLC and Clinton worked for years “inside the Democratic Party.” Regardless of what you think of Clinton or his policies, he sought to “rebuild a political majority that would allow Democrats to regain control of the national agenda from the increasingly militant conservatism within the GOP.”

Schultz seeks to do the opposite: to split the Democrats and peel off Democratic voters to his independent campaign.

‘Exaggerating the power of the left in the Democratic coalition, he’s portraying the party as beyond redemption for anyone holding centrist views. To make that case, Schultz is echoing claims from Trump and other Republicans that Democrats have become radical. At times, Schultz has even called some of the Democratic ideas he opposes “un-American” or “not American,” not to mention “punitive” and “ridiculous.”

By validating the Republican efforts to portray Democrats as outside the mainstream, Schultz is helping Trump already.’

2020 Democratic Primary, Democrats

Bernie Sanders sets up the world’s richest man, Jeff Bezos, as a foil with the Stop BEZOS Act — and gets clobbered by policy wonks

Poor Bernie Sanders has fallen victim to the hack gap. – Kevin Drum

A decade ago, Mark Kleiman noted a basic advantage of the right, which Matthew Yglesias dubbed, ‘the hack gap.’ Yglesias:

Just like Mark, “I don’t really wish that we behaved like our wingnut opponents, but their capacity to work up and sustain outrage has to be counted among their structural advantages.”

In brief (generalizing beyond the examples Kleiman and Yglesias discuss): rightwing proposals and theories, even those only tenuously – if at all – linked to facts, are reliably repeated by Fox News Channel, talk radio, and other outlets in the conservative media bubble and readily embraced by conservative foundation reps, policy analysts, and legislators. The goal is less to advance understanding or actual policy, than to repudiate opponents on the left – regarded as enemies of conservatism – who serve as foils to rev up the Republican base at election time.

In contrast, among mainstream liberals, there is a commitment to reality-based analysis and advocacy. Truth and accuracy are highly valued. Why? Because liberals are committed to crafting legislative and administrative solutions to real-world problems. The ideas advanced must be empirically well-grounded or there is no point to implementing them.

The failure of Congress to repeal and replace the Affordable Healthcare Act in 2017 is illustrative of the dynamic on the right: there was no Republican member of the House or the Senate with a deep understanding of the ACA and the healthcare market, of pragmatic conservative alternatives, and of the trade-offs and costs involved in making changes. No one, in other words, who had anything resembling a replacement on hand – even after many years of election promises to repeal and replace. That practical focus was nowhere on the Republican agenda.

On the liberal side, the dynamics are different. When Democrats passed the ACA in 2010 they did so to solve a genuine problem in plain sight – millions of Americans without access to affordable healthcare; the Democratic majority passed the ACA to reduce the number of people without health insurance. Among the practical goals were improving people’s health – especially among people living in poverty, with preexisting conditions, and lacking employer-based insurance – in measurable ways, and ensuring that catastrophic illness would not result in bankruptcy and financial ruin for families.

Demagoguery may help win elections; it is not a reliable route to sound public policy. Hacks are useful for rousing up the Republican base, but not for fixing problems among folks who work for a living.

Stop BEZOS

This past week, Senator Bernie Sanders (and Representative Ro Khanna) proposed the Stop BEZOS Act (Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies Act), a title suggestive of a simple, enticing meme, replete with moral outrage and demonization – ingredients unhesitatingly embraced daily by Fox News. The idea itself is equally beguiling: the legislation would require large companies to pay back, dollar for dollar, the cost of public benefits (such as, food stamps, Medicaid, rental subsidies, and school lunch aid) that support their low-wage employees.

“At a time of massive income and wealth inequality, when the 3 wealthiest people in America own more wealth than the bottom 50 percent and when 52 percent of all new income goes to the top one percent, the American people are tired of subsidizing multi-billionaires who own some of the largest and most profitable corporations in America,” Sanders said in a statement.

Sanders cited a report by the nonprofit New Food Economy suggesting that a third of Amazon employees in Arizona — and thousands in other states — rely on food stamps.

Since analysts on the left are more highly committed to getting the details right, than scoring points against conservatives, Sanders’ proposal was met with  a chorus of objections.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities – the preeminent liberal research shop focused on how public policy affects poverty and inequality – while praising the act as well intentioned, offered a devastating critique: “It seeks to induce large firms to raise the wages they pay, which is an important goal after decades of stagnant or falling wages for millions of hard-working Americans. But the legislation likely won’t meet that goal, and it would have a series of adverse unintended consequences. Moreover, we have better ways to induce or require firms like Amazon and Walmart to raise their wages and bear more of the costs of core government functions, including basic nutrition assistance and health coverage for struggling families.”

The problems included creating perverse incentives to hire fewer low-income and disabled workers; promoting corporate lobbying to reduce assistance programs; requiring complicated and expensive administrative procedures; and failing to do what it sets out to do – to raise wages and living standards.

Other analysts on the left, while praising Sanders’ intentions, added another criticism: that by stigmatizing people receiving benefits, it was antithetical to sustaining a healthy social safety net.

Ryan Cooper: “Now, I understand what Sanders is driving at. Amazon workers are underpaid. And it is important to note that Amazon has been directly subsidized …

But the way to wage class war on Jeff Bezos is with broad taxes, unions, and regulations, not schemes to punish him for his employees being on public programs.”

Jared Bernstein: ‘”My concern is that there is already a political movement afoot to vilify public benefits and even though I know for a fact that the main sponsors of this bill — Sanders and Ro Khanna — don’t feel that way, I worry that this idea unintentionally provides the hard right with another argument,” Bernstein told Business Insider.’

Dean Baker at the Center for Economic and Policy Research and  Mike Konczal at the Roosevelt Institute also offered critical perspectives on the proposal.

Michael Hiltzik takes exception to the criticism as misguided.

One would think that Democrats and progressives would praise Sanders for this legislative initiative. After all, Amazon’s employment of low-wage workers, its baleful influence on communities and the punishing working conditions in the warehouses from which its merchandise is shipped to customers have been amply documented. Instead, they’ve turned their fire hoses full-blast on Sanders himself. The drawbacks of his proposal have been picked apart to a fare-thee-well by some of the nation’s leading progressive think tanks, including the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities.

The critics aren’t wrong about the proposal, exactly. They’re just allowing themselves to be distracted by the details of a legislative proposal that on the gonna-happen scale is a “not.”

So, should we take Sanders seriously, but not literally? Well, something like that. Hiltzik again:

The truth is that proposals like Sanders and Khanna’s serve a very clear purpose in our political system. They’re not designed to end up as the law of the land, but as prompts for debate.

Matt Yglesias argues that Sanders, whose 2016 policy proposals on Medicare-for-all, free college, and a $15 minimum wage have been widely embraced by Democrats in this cycle, intends to separate himself from the pack. So, while other Democrats would be unhappy to see their proposals dismissed as unworkable, “Sanders almost certainly won’t care, and part of the core of his appeal is a sense that this is the correct and appropriate way to think about politics.”

September 7, 2018 update – Jared Bernstein tips his hat to Senator Sanders: “When Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), scourge of the top tenth of the top 1%, and Bezos, denizen of that privileged niche, are exchanging loving tweets, attention must be paid. Sanders, along with Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.), has long called out Amazon for its labor practices, and they recently introduced a bill, subtly entitled the Stop BEZOS Act. While I share their goal of pushing for higher pay for low-wage workers, I thought their bill, which charged companies for the public benefits its workers received, was misguided in that it would vilify legitimate benefit receipt and lead firms to discriminate against hires they thought might draw such benefits. But I have no question that their pressure was instrumental in driving this change.”

Photo: Wikimedia Commons.