Too socialist? Democrats bristle at the notion on night 2 of Miami’s debates

Bernie Sanders acknowledged Thursday night in Miami that taxes will rise for middle class Americans if he’s elected president in 2020. Kamala Harris would eliminate private health insurance. And Joe Biden would roll back the $1 trillion in tax cuts recently passed by Republicans and Donald Trump.

But the Democrats running for president say that doesn’t mean their ideas are too “socialist” to be embraced by voters.

Early in the discussion on the second night of the Democratic Party’s back-to-back presidential primary debates in Miami, half of the party’s top 20 candidates grappled over questions from moderators about socialism and whether ideas intended to benefit the working class would instead turn off blue-collar voters concerned about moving too far to the left.

“We want healthy capitalism,” asserted New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand. “We don’t want corrupt communism.”

On a day when one of the party’s presidential contenders apologized for using a rallying cry of Cuba’s Communist Party during a rally in Miami, Sanders said polls show his “Democratic Socialism” brand is more popular than President Donald Trump. He said his pitch to bring “Medicare for All” to the country and to create tuition-free public colleges would create higher taxes for the middle class but would, on the other hand, significantly reduce the cost of healthcare.

“The last poll I saw had us 10 points ahead of Donald Trump because the American people understand that Trump is a phony, Trump is a pathological liar and a racist and that he lied to the American people during his campaign,” Sanders said. “He said he was going to stand up for working families” and then “tried to throw 32 million people off the healthcare they have.”

Democrats have been assailed by Republicans over the last year or so as veiled socialists, regardless of how left their policies lie. Tech entrepreneur Andrew Yang has offered to give people $1,000 a month.

But the argument has divided people in the party, with former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper recently being booed after arguing that Democrats would lose next year if they embrace ideas that are too drastic.

“If we don’t clearly define we’re not socialist, the R’s are going to come at us every way they can,” Hickenlooper said.

But other Democrats on the stage pushed back on the suggestion that their ideas are too radical. Harris bristled when asked how Democrats will pay for proposals to change education, healthcare and carbon emissions.

“Where was that question when the Republicans and Donald Trump passed a tax bill that benefited the top 1% and the biggest corporations ... contributing $1 trillion to the debt of America that middle class Americans will pay for?” she asked. “For too long the rules have been written in favor of the people who have the most.”

This story was originally published June 27, 2019 at 9:47 PM.