Bernie’s Socialism Goes Mainstream

‘Medicare for all’ is fast becoming a Democratic Party litmus test.

Hillary Clinton’s memoir of her presidential campaign is getting most of the media attention this week, but that’s the politics of progressive nostalgia. If you want to know where the Democratic Party is going, Bernie Sanders showed the way Wednesday with his proposal for a complete government takeover of health care.

“Medicare for all,” the Vermont Socialist calls it, and what was once a crank idea is fast becoming a progressive litmus test for Democratic candidates. Fifteen Democratic Senators endorsed it, including possible 2020 presidential candidates Elizabeth Warren (Mass.), Kamala Harris (Calif.) and even Cory Booker (N.J.) Hard to believe, but not long ago Mr. Booker was posing as a moderate.

The Sanders bill would expand Medicare—now available to people 65 and older—to the entire U.S. population over four years. Our readers understand how expensive such “free” medical care would be in runaway costs for taxpayers and rationed care in the form of the long waiting lists that exist in other socialist systems.

But no one should think this can’t happen here. The Republican failure on health care guarantees the continuing decline of ObamaCare and that creates an opening for Democrats to escalate their designs for more government control. Barack Obama once told us that he favored such a single-payer system but America wasn’t ready for it. But in an era of political tumult, anything can happen, all the more so when millennials can’t remember the 1990s, much less the Cold War. All the old battles are new again.

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