Bernie Supporter Drops Truth Bomb on Kamala!

In a recent address in Montana, former President Donald Trump stirred controversy by predicting that “pink-haired Marxists” would be “cheering” if “Comrade Walz and Comrade Harris” triumph in the upcoming election. During an appearance on “Fox & Friends,” Trump took aim at Vice President Kamala Harris, claiming that “no one knew” how “radical left” she was until she became the Democratic nominee, adding that she is “more so than Bernie Sanders.” Tesla CEO and Trump supporter Elon Musk echoed these sentiments, labeling Harris as “quite literally a communist.”

As someone who supported Senator Bernie Sanders during his 2020 campaign, I find this portrayal of Harris to be wildly inaccurate. If the candidate currently leading the polls were truly more left-wing than Bernie, I would be thrilled. Unfortunately, the narrative spun by Trump and Musk is far removed from the reality of the political landscape. The upcoming Democratic National Convention is unlikely to showcase anything resembling a democratic socialist agenda.

One of Sanders’ most notable policy proposals was “Medicare for All,” a plan to eliminate the for-profit insurance industry and recognize healthcare as a fundamental right. While this might seem radical in the U.S. context, it’s a relatively modest proposal by global standards. For instance, Canadians have enjoyed free basic health insurance for decades. Implementing a public insurance system in the United States would be a significant move toward ensuring that every American has access to healthcare. In a country where people die because they can’t afford their insulin and where medical debt is a leading cause of bankruptcy, public insurance could be a lifesaver.

If Harris and Walz were indeed as left-leaning as Trump and Musk suggest, they might advocate for an American version of Britain’s National Health Service (NHS). The British model not only provides free insurance but also places hospitals under government ownership and pays doctors as public employees. While this might sound extreme to American ears, the NHS is so popular in the U.K. that even conservative politicians avoid criticizing it, knowing that doing so would be political suicide.

To earn the “comrade” label Trump has mockingly assigned, Harris and Walz would need to propose far more radical ideas than aligning the U.S. with other Western democracies. They could consider expropriating billionaire-owned corporations and transferring ownership to the workers. Though my hair isn’t pink, I would certainly cheer if Harris followed the suggestion of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to turn Amazon into a worker-owned cooperative. Why not allow those performing the grueling work in Amazon’s warehouses to share equally in the profits they generate?

However, such proposals are unlikely to materialize. In reality, “Comrade” Harris ran as a moderate during her 2020 presidential campaign. While she co-sponsored Medicare for All in the Senate, her position during the campaign was a balancing act between Sanders’ and Biden’s platforms, leading to a muddled and inconsistent stance.

Medicare for All has always meant a single-payer national health insurance system. The idea is simple: rather than having the wealthy receive better care and leaving millions of Americans uninsured, everyone would have equal access to high-quality healthcare. It’s the same principle that governs how local fire departments operate—putting out fires regardless of whether it’s a mansion or a trailer that’s burning. The idea that you should have to pay for “fire insurance” and that firefighters should demand a copay before turning on the hose seems absurd, yet we accept this logic when it comes to healthcare.

Implementing Medicare for All would actually put more money into the pockets of middle-income taxpayers who already have insurance by eliminating premiums, copays, and deductibles in favor of a modest tax increase. It’s a powerful idea, but Harris distanced herself from it in 2020. As she navigated the Democratic primary, she awkwardly claimed to support Medicare for All while simultaneously suggesting that private insurance companies would still play a role, maintaining a two-tiered system that benefits the wealthy.

In her current campaign, Harris isn’t even attempting to split the difference. Her campaign recently informed CNN that she no longer supports a single-payer healthcare system. Additionally, the Harris campaign told the Washington Examiner that she has changed her position on a federal jobs guarantee, which was a component of the Green New Deal she once supported. This resolution, backed by Harris and 13 other senators in 2019, promised to “guarantee a job with a family-sustaining wage” for every American willing to work, a critical promise for workers in industries like oil, gas, and coal who fear their jobs will disappear in the transition to green energy. The campaign now says it is “looking forward,” suggesting that these ideas are relics of the past.

If ensuring healthcare and jobs for Americans is considered “backward-looking” because these ideas were popular in 2019, what about the issue that has dominated the left’s agenda over the past year—U.S. involvement in Israel’s war in Gaza? Since October, millions of Palestinians have been displaced, and more children have died in the first five months of the conflict than in all other war zones combined over the past four years. This issue has caused such an uproar that in key swing states like Michigan and Wisconsin, “uncommitted” received more votes in the Democratic primary than the margins by which Biden won those states in 2020. Despite this, when Harris was confronted by protesters demanding she commit to cutting off military aid to Israel, her national security adviser stated that she “will always ensure Israel is able to defend itself against Iran and Iran-backed terrorist groups.” In other words, the U.S. will continue supplying the bombs that Israel drops on refugee camps.

This stance may appease national security hawks in Harris’ coalition, just as her retreat from national healthcare and a jobs guarantee likely pleases the donor class. But don’t expect any “cheering” from “pink-haired Marxists” or even Bernie-style social democrats. While these groups might still vote for Harris to prevent Trump’s return to power, they long for jobs, peace, and healthcare—issues that Harris seems intent on keeping off the table.