[Every single Congressional co-sponsor of these bills in the House
and Senate who were up for reelection beat their Republican opponents
in 2020. And in 2018. And in 2016.] [[link removed]]

NO CO-SPONSOR OF 'MEDICARE FOR ALL' HAS LOST REELECTION IN THE PAST
DECADE (EVEN IN GOP-LEANING DISTRICTS)  
[[link removed]]


 

Richard Lachmann, Michael Schwartz, Kevin Young
December 21, 2020
Common Dreams
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_ Every single Congressional co-sponsor of these bills in the House
and Senate who were up for reelection beat their Republican opponents
in 2020. And in 2018. And in 2016. _

Nurses and doctors rallying for Medicare for All in Chicago over the
weekend outside the annual gathering of the American Medical
Association which currently opposes the plan to make healthcare
coverage in the United States available to all., National Nurses
United/flickr/cc)

 

It's common sense: Democratic politicians who support "radical"
notions like Medicare for All, free college, or preserving a habitable
planet via a Green New Deal guarantee their own defeat. A recent _New
York Times_ interview
[[link removed]]
with Pennsylvania Congressman and corporate Democrat Conor Lamb states
simply that Medicare for All is "unpopular in swing districts," an
idea presumably so obvious that it requires no documentation. Lamb
asserts that opposition to Medicare for All and other progressive
policies "separates a winner from a loser in a [swing] district like
mine."

The Democratic Party's army of political strategists has used this
logic for decades, to explain both victories and defeats. Wunderkind
party consultant David Shor, for example, assures us that "boring,
moderate"
[[link removed]]Democrats
systematically outperform the "ideological extremists."

This mantra
[[link removed]] been
internalized by much of the Democratic electorate. Millions of voters
in the 2016 and 2020 primaries voted for the "moderate" choices
largely because they thought Bernie Sanders and other progressives
were not electable
[[link removed]].
"I might like Medicare for All," the thinking goes, "but most of the
country is inalterably opposed, so someone like Sanders just can't
win."

It may be common sense, but it's wrong. Every single Congressional
co-sponsor of the "Medicare for All" bills in the House and Senate who
were up for reelection beat their Republican opponents in 2020. And in
2018. And in 2016. And every Democrat who lost reelection to a
Republican had campaigned on the "boring, moderate" platform that Shor
contends is the formula for success.

In fact, you have to go back a full decade to find a single Democratic
incumbent who co-sponsored a Medicare for All bill and lost their
reelection bid. One lost in 2010, when 52 total House Democrats lost
reelection in the Republican blowout. For the entire period from 2002
to 2020, there were two. During that time Medicare for All has had
between 38 and 124 co-sponsors in the House.

In 2003, Rep. John Conyers (D-MI) first introduced his "Expanded and
Improved Medicare for All"
[[link removed]] bill
(H.R. 676). He reintroduced the bill in each session until 2019, when
Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA) introduced a successor (H.R. 1384), the
"Medicare for All Act of 2019."
[[link removed]]
(In the meantime, Bernie Sanders first introduced a Senate version in
2017.) Starting with the election of 2004, therefore, many voters
could express their opinion about this prototypical progressive
measure by voting for or against the co-sponsor of a Medicare for All
bill. And, if Conor Lamb, David Shor, and the other Democratic
establishment gurus are correct, the "ideological extremists
[[link removed]]"
who sponsored those bills should have performed poorly in swing
districts, which are only willing to send "boring, moderate" Democrats
to Congress. The Medicare for All advocates could be elected and
reelected only in overwhelmingly Democratic districts with a strongly
progressive population, exemplified by Jayapal's 7th Washington
district in Seattle.

Taking Lamb's challenge, we identified the 147 Congressional swing
districts which flipped from Republican to Democrat in a House
election in 2002 or later. We then looked at which of those Democrats
won reelection the next time around, comparing the 12 Democrats from
those districts who became co-sponsors of Medicare for All with the
135 "moderates" who did not support the bill.

 
All 12 Medicare for All sponsors won reelection, despite the fact that
their seats had been held by Republicans just two years before. On the
other hand, 30% (40 out of 135) of the moderates lost re-election in
the next cycle. 

This pattern was particularly striking in 2020, when Democrats were
surprised by their loss of 10 seats in the House despite Joe Biden's
victory at the presidential level. Of the 12 Medicare for All sponsors
previously elected in swing districts, 9 were running for reelection
in 2020. All 9 won. Four of these districts had even leaned Republican
[[link removed]] in the prior two
presidential elections. By contrast, 30 percent (11 of 37) of the
moderate Democrats from swing districts lost their reelection bids.

These results refute Conor Lamb's maxim that progressives can't win
election or reelection "in a [swing] district like mine," as well as
David Shor's proclamation that "boring, moderate"
[[link removed]] Democrats
systematically outperform the "ideological extremists." The simple
truth is that progressives have a better record of winning reelection,
even in the swing districts.

Is Medicare for All just an exception? That is, do other progressive
policies still alienate the "moderate" voter, as Lamb and Shor argue?
To test this possibility, we looked at what is likely the most
polarizing of prominent issues in the 2020 election: the willingness
of candidates to support systemic reform to curb racist violence by
the police. We considered the electoral fate of the eight
swing-district Democrats who co-sponsored H.R. 7120, the "George Floyd
Justice in Policing Act of 2020." We found that all had won
reelection, despite the unanimous common sense among establishment
Democrats that supporting the demands of the Movement for Black Lives
was electoral poison.

These results support the argument that the left has long been making:
that there is a real appetite for progressive, anti-corporate policies
among the U.S. public—even in swing states like Lamb's Pennsylvania
[[link removed]],
and even among the white voters who are so often dismissed and
misunderstood by Democratic leaders and hotshot consultants. If those
policies are framed clearly and honestly in terms that are
intelligible to the average person (e.g., "Medicare for All"), they
often garner wide support even in swing districts. And they gain more
support than the idea of returning to the pre-Trump status quo and the
hollow promises of establishment Democrats. 

It's difficult to believe that Democratic Party gurus really
misunderstand this reality. All the data we've presented above is
easily available online. We collected and analyzed it in about 48
hours. They study this stuff full-time. If they don't see it by now,
it's because they and their bosses—and their real bosses, the
corporate overlords—are committed not to seeing it. As Upton
Sinclair said [[link removed]], "It is
difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary
depends upon his not understanding it."

Richard Lachmann is professor of sociology at the State University of
New York, Albany, and author of _First-Class Passengers on a Sinking
Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers
[[link removed]]_ (Verso,
2020).

MICHAEL SCHWARTZ
[[link removed]] is professor of
sociology at Stony Brook State University and the author of "_War
Without End: The Iraq War in Context
[[link removed]]"_ (2008). Schwartz's work
on protest movements, contentious politics, and the arc of U.S.
imperialism has appeared in numerous academic and popular outlets over
the past 40 years. His email address is [email protected].

Kevin Young is associate professor of history at the University of
Massachusetts, Amherst. Schwartz and Young are the co-authors, with
Tarun Banerjee, of Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99%
Can Do About It
[[link removed]]
(Verso, 2020).

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