Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has made “Medicare for all” (MFA) one of his signature issues – and defied his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination to join him in calling for a government takeover of the entire healthcare industry.
But one of the deans of the Democratic party has already declared the battle for MFA to be over before it even begins.
MFA, says Harry Reid, is DOA.
“It’s impractical… I’m against it,” he told an ABC podcast. “There’s not a chance in hell it would pass.”
Then Reid – the longtime Nevada senator who served as majority leader from 2007-2015 – damned Sanders with the faint praise of “I think the world of Bernie Sanders” while simultaneously trashing his MFA plan.
In addition to Sanders, Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., also backed Medicare for all… except then she didn’t, then she kinda did, and then did and didn’t at the same time.
While she still talks up MFA as a goal, her plan now makes it optional, at least for most of her supposed first term, which removes the “all” from the “Medicare for all.”
Most moderate Democrats don’t want to see any version of MFA.
Reid, for example, told ABC that he wants to see the Affordable Care Act – aka Obamacare – expanded and protected by whoever becomes president next.
And he’s hardly alone within his own party in attacking the hard-left shift on healthcare.
Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., also slammed Sanders and Warren over Medicare for all.
“Over two-thirds of the Democrats in the US Senate are not on the bill that you and Sen. Warren are on,” Klobuchar told Sanders on the debate stage.
Then, she turned her sights on Warren for flip-flop-flipping on the issue.
“You acknowledge that Medicare for all you couldn’t get there right away,” she said, warning that the Warren version of the plan would boot 149 million Americans from their current health insurance plans.
“Then a few months ago, you said you’ll wait a while to get there,” she added. “That was some acknowledgment that maybe what we’re talking about it is true.”
It’s not clear who, if anyone, Reid will be supporting as he hasn’t publicly endorsed any of the Democratic presidential hopefuls.
However, he predicted that the eventual Democratic nominee would “thump Trump.”
Or maybe not…
Reid also issued a resounding warning to his own party about Trump.
“He could win,” he said. “We have to be vigilant and make sure we do everything, and that the man is not reelected.”
Is it possible that was another veiled shot at Sanders?
Democrats in 2016 accused Reid — then-Senate minority leader – of not doing enough to reel in Sanders after the Democratic National Convention turned unruly due to his heckling, howling, booing supporters.
“You’ve got to control people, you’ve got to set a tone where this is not possible within your constituency,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., told The Washington Post when asked about Sanders and his supporters. “I don’t know why he wouldn’t do that. We’re trying to keep a party together, we’re trying to be able to solve problems in a way that is effective, and I think this just really is the wrong thing.”
But as the newspaper noted, Reid “remained wary of strong-arming Sanders” as he needed his support in the Senate at the time.
Now, outside of politics, Reid appears finally ready to take on Sanders… and push him to bring his unruly supporters in line to not undermine the eventual nominee.
But some Democrats might say he’s about four years too late.
— Walter W. Murray is a reporter for The Horn News. He is an outspoken conservative and a survival expert, and is the author of “America’s Final Warning.”