The campaign to become the nation’s first socialist president will face challenges unknown to other candidates, and the epithet “commie pinko” is likely already echoing in some conversations about the possibility. However, the latest polling to look at Sanders’s image around the country put him as the third most popular senator with a 67% approval rating.
While socialists have run for president before, none have started from the lofty office of U.S. Senator.
Sanders first took his socialist values to Congress when he won election in 1990, becoming the first Independent representative in 40 years. He was elected to the Senate in 2006.
There, Sanders caucuses with Democrats but often bucks the party lines, pushing a more progressive agenda. He has been a vociferous proponent of policies that address climate change, introducing the Global Warming Pollution Reduction Act aimed at halting “dangerous interference” with the earth’s atmosphere. He has also spoken out against the concentration of ownership of media outlets, called for campaign finance reform and transparent political spending, and spoke out against the continuation of Bush-era tax cuts for the wealthy in an eight and a half hour pseudo-filibuster.
Most controversially, Sanders is a proponent of universal health care as an alternative to the Affordable Care Act, in which medical care is socialized as it is in much of the developed world including Europe, Canada and developed nations in East Asia. Anyone who thinks the ACA is government overreach will certainly have a hard time with Sanders’s hope to implement “single-payer” health care.
Only Vermont could give the nation a senator like Bernie Sanders. A maverick state, Vermont was the first to mandate public financing for universal education in its constitution, the first to legalize same-sex marriage by legislation (rather than by court order), and the first to adopt a single-payer health care system. Vermont was even the first to abolish slavery outright by prohibiting it through constitutional amendment in the 18th century.
It’s unsure if Sanders will run as an Independent — or if he will even run at all — given the challenges non-Republicrat candidates face. If he chooses to run as a Democrat, there is a national apparatus he can avail himself of. However, as a Democrat, he is also likely to face off against Hillary Clinton. (Sanders has said he will run if no one truly progressive challenges Clinton.)
It would be interesting to see Sanders join the podium in a general election debate, however. Unlike the presidential debates in 2012, in which candidates President Obama and Mitt Romney disagreed more on style than substance, Sanders would likely call for universal health care, for more protections for American workers, and even for a revamped election system.
And those would be debates worth having.
