HotSauce 'Clinton vs. Sanders: Will Democrats Choose Evolution or Revolution?' WaPo Eugene Robinson
~Excerpts~
The difference is evident in the two candidates’ positions on health care. Clinton proposes building on the foundation of Obamacare, the Children’s Health Insurance Program, Medicaid and Medicare to further expand coverage. Sanders advocates a new single-payer system, akin to those in other major industrialized countries, that would be truly universal and provide health care as a right.
Clinton recalled that in the fight over passage of the Obamacare legislation, efforts to include even one “public option” — government-run plan — had to be abandoned. To “start over again, pushing our country back into that kind of a contentious debate, I think is the wrong direction,” she said.
In other words, let’s have evolutionary change.
Sanders noted that there are still 29 million Americans without health insurance. He argued that a single-payer system, which he describes as “Medicare for all,” would not only provide coverage for everyone but also dramatically reduce medical costs. He said the issue is “whether we have the guts to stand up to the private insurance companies and all of their money, and the pharmaceutical industry. That’s what this debate should be about.”
Translation: We need a political revolution.
On issue after issue, Clinton proposes incremental solutions that take into account our political system as it is: sharply divided along ideological lines and warped by gerrymandering and virtually unfettered campaign contributions. Sanders proposes dramatic solutions that will only be possible when power is wrested from “big money” interests that refuse to do “what the American people want them to.”
In that sense, Democrats are being asked to make a classic heads-vs.-hearts decision. With Republicans controlling both houses of Congress, Clinton would ordinarily have a huge advantage. Given what’s happening in the GOP campaign, however, this doesn’t much look like an ordinary election cycle.
Sanders got a couple of the biggest cheers Sunday night, but for most of the evening the crowd seemed to be on Clinton’s side. In interviews afterward, several South Carolina political veterans predicted that Clinton would win the primary here, perhaps comfortably.
But the loyal Democrats I spoke with also wished there was more passion in Clinton’s appeal to go along with the pragmatism. To convince people to eat their vegetables this year, you might have to add a little hot sauce.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/with-clinton-and-sanders-its-evolution-vs-revolution/2016/01/18/e9ef2330-be0a-11e5-bcda-62a36b394160_story.html?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_headlines
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