In advance of the kick-off of another two-night round of Democratic presidential debates, former Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered some sound advice those fellow Democrats who are seeking to unseat President Trump.
“Before our party promises health care coverage to undocumented immigrants — a position not even Ted Kennedy took — let’s help the more than 30 million Americans who are a single illness away from financial ruin. Before we start worrying about whether the Boston Marathon bomber can vote, let’s stop states that are actively trying to curtail voting rights ofcitizens,” wrote the former adviser to President Obama.
The counsel went unheeded as many of the assembled candidates expressed support for replacing private health insurance with some variation of government run health care – a proposal to which most Americans are opposed. And then they backed decriminalizing illegal border crossings – again, a position to which most Americans are opposed.
In a nutshell, most of the potential nominees, including front-runners Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, want to take Americans’ private health insurance away from them and force them to subsidize the coverage of illegal aliens.
“It does seem as if you’re running for president that you ought to take into consideration what the country wants. And the fact is large numbers of people oppose the Medicare for All proposal if it replaces private insurance,” said former Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod in the debate’s wake. “We’ve seen it in poll after poll, a large number of people in this country do not believe the border should be decriminalized. A large number of people in this country don’t believe that undocumented immigrants should qualify for public [aid].”
Some sanity was heard from more moderate Democrats, such as Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, who hails from a labor union-heavy district.
Addressing the positions taken already in the debate, Ryan noted that “we’ve talked about giving free health care to undocumented workers when so many Americans are struggling to pay for their health care. I quite frankly don’t think that that is an agenda that we can move forward on and win.”
Unfortunately for Ryan and other moderating voices, the polls so far indicate neither he nor they are in a strong position. It would seem from the first night that the presidential carriage is being driven by the open borders faction of the party.
For a sense of just how implausible that might seem, just ask Bernie Sanders.
“Should we have a completely open border so that anyone can come in the United States of America? If that were to happen, which I strongly disagree with, there is no question in my mind that that would substantially lower wages in this country,” said the Vermont senator during his last presidential campaign in 2015.
“Do you think there is any candidate for president who thinks that that makes sense? I don’t think so,” he said.
It seems Sanders and many Democrats think differently now.