The House and Senate are out until September. President Joe Biden will be in Washington on Monday for meetings on the situation in the Middle East. Vice President Kamala Harris has a whirlwind campaign tour this week that features stops in eight states over five days covering more than 4,700 miles.
Progressive Push. As Harris finalizes the critical issue of who her running mate will be, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is pressing the presumptive Democratic nominee to embrace a sweeping progressive agenda during her run for the White House.
Sanders recently commissioned a poll of more than 1,150 voters in the battleground states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The one-on-one contest between Harris and former President Donald Trump is tied at 49%, which is similar to recent surveys. When Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and other third–party candidates are added in, Trump leads Harris 46%–45%.
Yet the same poll shows the progressive agenda — much of which was included in Build Back Better and other proposals by Biden, Sanders notes — was overwhelmingly popular. This comes even as the state of the U.S. economy, jobs and inflation, issues on which Trump and Republicans are dominating, are easily the top focus for voters.
“There are not any radical ideas that nobody has ever heard of,” Sanders said in an interview on Sunday to discuss the poll findings.
For instance, the poll shows that increasing taxes on the wealthy is supported by a 71%-27% margin overall. Even Republicans favored it by a 55%-43% majority.
Raising taxes on large corporations was also popular. A full 67% of respondents supported this, compared to 29% who said these companies should pay the same as they are now or less.
And there was very strong backing for increasing the minimum wage, with fully 89% saying the current $7.25 per hour rate needs to be boosted. Raising the rate to $17 per hour was backed by 70% of respondents, the majority of those strongly. The Senate rejected Sanders’ effort to increase the minimum wage to $15 back in March 2021, although many states have boosted it themselves.
Other long-time progressive planks — many of which Sanders has unsuccessfully pushed for years — get a big thumbs up in this poll too. These include expanding Social Security benefits; adding dental, vision and hearing coverage to Medicare; a bigger Child Tax Credit; single-payer health care; eliminating medical debt; building two million “affordable-housing units” and capping rent increases; and free college for all, among other actions.
Interestingly, a solid majority — 57% — also oppose cutting military spending, which Sanders and Hill progressives have long urged.
More from Sanders:
We’ll note that these progressive initiatives have little if any chance of becoming law due to overwhelming GOP opposition. However, Sanders argued that the polling showed Harris should adopt them as part of her campaign for president.
We also asked Sanders about concerns over inflation, which voters decisively say is their top issue. The progressive agenda would require hundreds of billions of dollars in new spending at a minimum, even as the federal government is already bleeding red ink.
Trump and Republicans have hammered Biden — and now Harris — over inflation and the high cost of living, arguing that the trillions spent under the American Rescue Plan, Inflation Reduction Act and other Democratic proposals set off the biggest surge in prices in more than 40 years.
But Sanders, like many Democrats, counters that the real cause of inflation is Corporate America raising prices in order to boost their bottom line.
“I think the overwhelming economic evidence is that the reason we’ve had inflation in recent years has everything to do with corporate greed,” Sanders said. “Most of the inflation we’re seeing in recent years has to do with record-breaking corporate profits.”
It’s also worth pointing out that some economists say Trump’s agenda would cause higher inflation than anything Democrats have proposed.
Sanders — the leading and loudest progressive voice on Capitol Hill — will be headlining a “Progressives for Harris” organizing call tonight. Other participants include Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Reps. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.) and Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), UAW President Shawn Fain and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, as well as a host of others.
Yet Sanders hasn’t formally endorsed Harris either. We asked Sanders about this discrepancy:
— John Bresnahan
