Not for more than a third of a century has American politics been so fractured – and Senator Bernie Sanders, whose underfunded, underestimated and underdog presidential campaign shook up the Democratic Party a year ago, has a message for a party he for many years forswore: Return to your roots as the sentinel of the poor and striving, workers and immigrants.
All that, plus one more thing for this week:
“The immediate task is to defeat one of the worst pieces of legislation ever presented in the history of this country, legislation that would raise premiums on older workers, to defund Planned Parenthood,” the Vermont senator said in an interview. “We need to rally the American people to oppose legislation that would deny people health care to give the rich tax benefits.”
The prescription from Mr. Sanders – the consummate political outsider now playing the role of political insider, the longest serving Independent in American congressional history now holding an official Democratic position as the chair of a party outreach committee – comes at a time when the two American parties’ divisions, growing larger rather than diminishing, are the moving parts in the vital week ahead and are giving shape to important long-term trends in the United States.
Those divisions came into sharp focus last week when the Democrats declared that a special election in Georgia earlier this month was a referendum on President Donald Trump and then poured enormous sums of money into the effort – only to lose decisively. Two days later, the Republican Senate leaders who laboured in secret for weeks to sculpt a health-system overhaul to replace Obamacare finally revealed their proposal – only to find their own colleagues in rebellion.
Now those tensions come together in new debates this week on an Obamacare replacement plan and in fresh challenges to the role of Nancy Pelosi, the California congresswoman who was the Speaker of the House of Representatives and now is the Democrats’ minority leader in the House. And all of this is happening in an atmosphere of profound voter discontent.
“There’s no secret that that there is mass disillusionment among the American people right now,” said Mr. Sanders, a fixture in Vermont politics for decades and, as a result of his strong showing against former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, now an important force in Washington.
“People are unfavourably disposed to the Republican Party and to the Democratic Party. We have some of the lowest election turnout rates in the world. A lot of people are in economic peril, working two or three jobs, and scared to death about their futures and worried about retirement.”
American parties regularly fall into disarray, disunion and dispute; it is one of the principal characteristics of politics in the United States. But almost always it is only one party – usually the one licking its wounds in defeat – that is riven with divisions. It is exceedingly rare for both parties at the same time to engage in deep introspection and sharp invective. Indeed, there hasn’t been stereo schisms, with both parties in upheaval, since 1980.
That year the Republicans faced a vicious turf war between establishment figures such as George H.W. Bush, the one-time director of central intelligence who won the Iowa caucuses, and Ronald Reagan, the former governor of California who won the New Hampshire primary. The party resolved the divisions when Mr. Reagan chose Mr. Bush as his vice-presidential running mate. At the same time, incumbent president Jimmy Carter spent the year dealing with the Iran hostage crisis and fighting off a challenge from the left from Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts.
The Democrats never resolved their differences – Mr. Kennedy far outshone the president at the party’s New York City convention with his “the hope still lives and the dream shall never die” speech, one of the great perorations of the last quarter of the 20th century – and the president suffered a punishing defeat in November that led to a dozen years of Republican occupation of the White House.
This time it is unclear which of the two parties will mend its fences first, and whether that will make any difference for next year’s House and Senate elections and for the presidential election of 2020. The 2018 midterm congressional elections have unusual importance, as they have the capacity of ending the Republicans’ rule on Capitol Hill even as they will test whatever governing message the Democrats are able to construct in the coming months from their position in the minority.
“The Democratic Party has to make it clear it is prepared to take on the greed of Wall Street, the greed of the [health] insurance companies, the greed of the fossil-fuel companies,” Mr. Sanders said in the interview. “We need an agenda that works for the American people.” But the Democrats are still coming to grips with their upset loss in the November presidential race and with the reality that Mr. Trump is president.
The battle over health care heated up late last week and may reach a boiling point, and perhaps a Senate vote, this week. The Republicans can afford to lose only two votes in the Senate. Five influential conservatives, including former presidential candidates Rand Paul of Kentucky and Ted Cruz of Texas, have indicated strong initial opposition to the bill – they believe it does not go nearly far enough – and Republican moderates have deep qualms, especially over cuts that imperil the battle against opioid addiction, with some worrying that too many Americans will be left without health care. Initial estimates for the House bill put that figure at 23 million fewer people being insured.
The Republicans who have objected to the Senate health-care bill may come around to support it by week’s end, but the vote will come at a time of another set of deep divisions – this time among the public. The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, published Thursday, showed that 41 per cent of Americans regard Obamacare as a good idea, with 38 per cent disagreeing. That split is within the margin of error.
“The task should be to improve Obamacare,” Mr. Sanders said. “Longer term we need to move toward … a single-payer system that will guarantee health care for all.”
Even if the new Republican plan does pass the Senate, the health-care debate is far from over. The next step: A House-Senate conference committee to iron out differences between the two chambers’ versions of the Obamacare overhaul. That could be a long, agonizing process, almost certain to create new fissures among Republicans and likely resulting in a version that differs substantially from the original House and Senate bills. Once the conference committee completes its work, both houses must vote on the result – with no amendments permitted.
“Health care is a right,” Mr. Sanders said. “This is a very ugly, anti-working class piece of legislation. When you get people off health insurance, thousands of people will die, others will suffer unnecessarily and sick children won’t get the attention they need and deserve.”
Follow David Shribman on Twitter: @shribmanpg
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