Democrats Follow Bernie Sanders Off a Cliff

The bad math and foolish politics of single-payer health care

How rudderless is the Democratic Party? Its membership is so bereft of leadership and policy direction that 16 of its senators have signed on to a health care bill sponsored by a self-avowed independent democratic socialist from Vermont.

The "Medicare for All Act of 2017" would repeal Obamacare, along with most other private and public insurance, and replace it with a government-run, one-size-fits-all, centrally directed system of reimbursement for medical expenses. Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, holds the same opinion of health insurance as he does antiperspirants: "You don't necessarily need a choice of 23 underarm spray deodorants or of 18 different sneakers when children are hungry in this country."

Senators Harris, Booker, Gillibrand, and Warren, who in addition to cosponsoring the bill may soon be fighting each other, as well as Sanders, for the Democratic nomination, are generals re-enacting the last war. They saw how well Sanders did against Clinton, they have marched in the anti-Trump "resistance" movement, and they want to inoculate themselves from accusations of ideological heresy.

Which is why they embrace the thin-skinned and irritable senator whose wife is under federal investigation. What the copycats forget is the future in politics is never a straight-line projection of the present, much less of the bizarre circumstances surrounding the 2016 Democratic primary.

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