On the eighth of April, Senator Bernie Sanders suspended his campaign to become the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee. Sanders, as you know, is a self-confessed Social Democrat, and he has raised the issues of the working class in his political career spanning over four decades.

At the heart of his campaign, both in 2016 and now in 2020, is the idea of a "political revolution", that is, make the government work for all, and not just for the "top 1 per cent", as his famous saying goes.  In his campaign, he promised to take on big corporates, their lobby groups and Wall Street.

His campaign was centred on three ideals: providing healthcare for all, increasing social welfare and providing easy access to education.

One big idea of Sanders was 'Medicare for all', which would provide free healthcare for all Americans.  This is important because you already know that in the US, if you lose your job, you will lose your healthcare. Another big rallying point of Sanders’ campaign was increasing the minimum wage to $15 per hour. Currently, the minimum wage as mandated by the federal government is $7.5 per hour. He had the firm belief that big multi-nationals cannot earn millions of dollar while paying their workers starvation wages. He is also a supporter of unions and wants employees to be represented in company boards.

He also promised to increase funding for social security programmes and housing projects.

One of Sanders' key messages is providing college for all. In his campaign he guaranteed tuition and debt-free public colleges, universities and trade-schools to all. He promised to cancel all student loan debt. These steps would help end "equity gaps in higher education attainment", according to his website.

These schemes and ideas helped Sanders win the youth vote and the minority vote. Over two million Americans contributed financially to Sanders' campaign, averaging $18.50 a donation. Some of his proposals – like providing higher wages to workers and not going to fight needless wars that go on for decades – which were seen as radical, are now mainstream in the Democratic party.

This was seen even in 2016, when Hillary Clinton agreed to expand Medicare insurance, which is federally-funded insurance for those over the age of 65, to those above the age of 50. This time around, almost all democrats running to win the party’s presidential nomination had some kind of plan to address the increasing income and wealth inequality in the US, and taxing the big corporates, especially internet giants like Amazon and Facebook, to fund social welfare programmes for the poorest of the poor.

These are all policies initially proposed by Sanders. Despite having such a huge influence, Bernie failed to capitalise on his initial surge. After coming very close to a win in Iowa, he won New Hampshire and Nevada and was all predicted to win primaries in most States. The party establishment came together and backed Joe after his big win in South Carolina, and all the moderate candidates dropped out and endorsed Biden on the eve of Super Tuesday. This helped Biden sweep eight States, leaving Sanders to bite the dust.

Bernie’s campaign never really recovered from the blow and the coronavirus shifter his attention totally. He asked his supporters to donate to NGOs that are helping the poor and started to work on legislations to counter the negative impact of the virus.

Biden, is now trying to reach out to Bernie’s supporters. He is wants to lower the Medicare eligibility age to 60, and forgive federal student debt for low-income and middle-class groups who attended public colleges and universities, historically black colleges and universities, and underfunded minority-serving institution.

Some of his radical ideas are also being used by the Republican party. This includes providing Americans with a one-time payment of $1,200 as part of a relief package for the coronavirus pandemic, and providing free healthcare to all those who cannot pay the medical bill.

Trump also made a pitch to Bernie's supoorters, in a tweet he said: This ended just like the Democrats & the DNC wanted, same as the Crooked Hillary fiasco. The Bernie people should come to the Republican Party, TRADE!

In the next episode, I’ll focus on Biden’s attempt to reach out to the left, Trump’s nasty Biden attack ad and we’ll also talk polling numbers!

Is there any topic you would like to hear on this podcast? Send me a mail at nivedita.v@thehindu.co.in.

Related Topics