Ta-Nehisi Coates hit Bernie Sanders pretty hard this week for rejecting the idea of paying “reparations for slavery.” He didn’t like Sanders’ response – that Congress would never agree to such payments, the discussion would prove divisive, and we should instead invest in rebuilding cities and creating new jobs. I’m sympathetic to the reparations argument – given that much American wealth and capitalism depends in no small measure on slavery it makes sense to compensate those who worked in slave labor camps to help build it. But as a practical matter the chances of developing an effective reparations policy and getting it through Congress do in fact look pretty dim.
Sanders also took a hit from the Clintons, who sent daughter Chelsea out to make the somewhat misleading claim that he would “dismantle ObamaCare,” not to mention Medicare and private health insurance. To be sure, Sanders’ idea for an American Health Security Trust Fund (AHSTF), or single-payer universal health care, would replace the Affordable Care Act eventually. It would do so by expanding Medicare to every American, so I’m not sure how this “dismantles” that program. And it’s also not clear that this would mean the end of private health insurance firms. Even a universal health care system would have room for private sector supplements to whatever benefits the public sector provided. But part of the critique is that AHSTF is a political pipe dream that could never pass in the existing political climate. “I am not interested in ideas that sound good on paper but will never make it in real life,” Clinton said.
Finally, Erik Loomis at Lawyers, Guns and Money fires a similar shot across Sanders’ bow. Asking “So What Would Happen if Bernie Sanders Won,” Loomis expresses two concerns: that Sanders would not be prepared to quickly appoint judges and executive officers, and that his base would abandon him within a year, dooming his presidency. Continue reading