Bernie Sanders isnt extreme

Bernie Sanders isn't extreme - AMERICAblog News

Tweet

I've touched on this point a couple of times,

but in light of this positively bonkers
editorial from the Washington Post I think it
deserves a full hearing: Bernie Sanders isn't
extreme.
In the editorial, the Post argues that Sanders
is so extreme that he comes full circle to the
point at which he is actually kinda?
conservative. Calling his easily-verifiable
claim that economic inequality is at historic
levels "hyperbolic," it then argues that
Sanders's broad-based social programs -- debt-free college, paid family leave, etc. -- aren't actually
progressive because they don't? exclude people who are reasonably well-off.? How can Sanders be a
progressive, they ask, if a single dollar of additional government spending? is used to benefit
someone who isn't already destitute?
In their frame, Sanders cares so much about spending $18 TRILLION dollars (yes, they cited the
Wall Street Journal's widely-discredited? accounting of the policies he's endorsed) that he doesn't
care where the money? goes. To them, Sanders is? the worst kind of extreme -- extreme? for the
sake of extremity.
This, along with the rest of the claims? made both by journalists and politicians across the political
spectrum that? Sanders resides two standard deviations away from? our ideological? norm, is bunk.?
Sanders's positions may place him in the left wing of the Democratic Party, but that left wing of the
Democratic Party is less extreme than nearly the entire field of Republican presidential candidates
while being? squarely in line with public opinion. There are three? big reasons why:
Voting record
Measuring ideology using someone's? voting record is difficult to pin down in one number, as a
representative? be more liberal on domestic issues than they are on foreign policy issues than they
are on social issues, and so forth. However, that doesn't mean that ideology can't be approximated.
Using the? DW-Nominate scoring system,? political scientists approximate representatives'
ideologies by comparing members' voting records to each other, rank-ordering them by their
propensity to vote for liberal or conservative bills. A representative with a DW-Nominate score of 1.0
is then considered to be perfectly conservative; -1.0 would be perfectly liberal.
As measured by DW-Nominate, Bernie Sanders's -.523 rating didn't? even make him the most liberal
Senator during the last session.? He was the third-most liberal, with Elizabeth Warren and Tammy

Baldwin registering as more reliably to the left.

But Warren, Baldwin and Sanders pale in comparison to the level of extremism seen on the right. Six
Republican Senators were farther to the right than Warren was to the left, and? fourteen were more
ideologically extreme than Sanders. Mike Lee, the most conservative Senator,? had a nearly-perfect
conservative DW-Nominate score of .986. Sanders's closest analogs on the right were John Cornyn
(.517) and? David Vitter (.505).

As I've written before, no one feels obligated to describe David Vitter as "extreme" unless? they
finish the? thought with? "-ly into women who are not his wife." He doesn't make an especially big
name for himself by being especially conservative because he has? so many? colleagues who are far,
far? to his right.
But DW-Nominate is, admittedly, an approximation. So if? for election watchers who don't like
political science metrics and would instead favor something more familiar, one could take a look at?
the two years in which Sanders and Hillary Clinton overlapped in the Senate to see how much their
votes overlapped.
By that metric, there isn't a lot of space between Sander and Hillary "I Plead Guilty to Being a
Moderate" Clinton. They? voted the same way 93 percent of the time -- about the same rate at which
Clinton voted with mainstream Democrats Ron Wyden and Barbara Mikulski. And in the 31 instances
in which they disagreed, many were on repeat votes -- six of the 31 divergent votes were on cloture
for the same immigration bill. Among the other disagreements:
Sanders voted against the bank bailout; Clinton voted for itSanders voted against the 2008 Defense
Budget bill; Clinton voted for itSanders voted to allow Guantanamo detainees to be moved to
American prisons; Clinton voted againstSanders voted against estate tax exemptions, Clinton voted
for them
All this is to say that Sanders was? to the left of Clinton during their two years together in the
Senate, but not by much. Going off of voting record alone, it simply isn't fair to say that Sanders is
too far removed from the core positions of the Democratic Party.
Policies
Of course, the biggest problem with looking at voting records is that they only measure policies?
that come up for a vote,? a factor over which Sanders has no control. This being the case, it's also
useful to look at what Sanders would do if Congress didn't exist -- what America looks like at his
greatest aspiration -- and see? how they square with public opinion.
And wouldn't you know it? America's buying what Sanders is selling. As I wrote last week:

When you ask voters how they feel about socialism, they bristle, but when you ask them about the
policies that social democrats like Sanders advocate, they love them. From? polling? conducted by
the Progressive Change Institute:
77% of likely 2016 voters? support universal Pre-K71%? support letting people buy into Medicare,
and 51% support "Medicare-for-all" single payer health insurance71% support a large-scale ($400
billion/year) infrastructure program70% support a "Green New Deal," entailing a massive
investment in green energy jobs59% support the establishment of a basic income59% support
raising the top marginal tax rate to 50% (the rate during Reagan"s presidency), and 54% support the
creation of a new tax bracket for millionaires and billionaires.55% support a financial transactions
tax
You can check out PCI"s? full results and methodology here.
Those numbers aren't from Democratic primary voters; they're from likely voters in the 2016
election. Since we already know that likely voters are less economically liberal than unlikely voters
and non-voting citizens, it's safe to say that the public at large would register similar or higher levels
of approval for these policies.
Even in the context of this right-shifted sample, planks on Sanders's platform are supported by
majorities of the likely electorate. Other ideas Sanders has endorsed, such as making Election Day a
national holiday and banning for-profit prisons, have plurality support.

Specific policies aside, Americans also agree with

Sanders's core economic message that the distribution of American income is too unequal. Way too
unequal. If the American people? had their way, our income distribution would likely be flatter than
even Sanders hopes to achieve (see the graphic on the right).
At the end of the day,? it only makes sense to call Bernie Sanders "extreme" if your frame of
reference is the consensus that formed in the '80s and '90s in Washington -- a consensus? that
accepted? low taxation, high inequality and privatized public services. But if your frame of reference
is? the American public more generally -- which, in a democracy, is supposed to be the frame of
reference of choice -- Bernie Sanders is pretty mainstream.
Let's start treating him that way, shall we?
Tags: 2016, Bernie Sanders, Elections, Hillary Clinton, ideology, liberal