Two pundits on very different sides of the ideological spectrum are pushing the idea that Bernie Sanders could unite the Democratic Party and win the election. Ross Douthat is promoting the idea because he wants the Democrats, and the entire country, to turn right on cultural issues; Ed Kilgore, for his part, wants M4A.
Are they right? Of course not. Bernie is not a uniter. His whole campaign is a take it or leave it affair.
Douthat has hopes for Bernie because he puts less emphasis on winning the culture wars than on class warfare and the “revolution.” He’s right about that, and I think he should even go a step further; the only way to sell the “revolution” is to win over reactionary workers by moving the Democratic Party to the right on cultural issues. Bernie is making zero effort to do that, however. Just because he would rather talk about benighted workers and Wall Street oligarchs doesn’t mean he rejects the wokeness agenda.
As for M4A, it is an inherently divisive issue, even within the Democratic Party. To me, the only way to sell it is to be brutally honest with the American people about the level of disruption that it would cause, and to say that the system is so bad, there is no other viable choice. After all, the insurance industry and a large percentage of providers are going to oppose the public option just as ferociously, so you might as well go for the whole enchilada. Sanders isn’t doing that, either. He just attributes all of the problems of the system to a handful of greedy interest groups, when, in reality, the pain of M4A would be felt in some way by everyone, and doctors and hospitals in particular.