With Bernie Sanders surging in the polls and drawing record crowds at every campaign event, the Washington establishment is starting to get worried. And when the Washington establishment gets worried, it insults people by calling "radical," "extremist," or "out of touch."
Just check out what John Boehner said about Bernie during an appearance yesterday on Face the Nation."Out of the mainstream" is the kind of smear that Washington insiders throw around all the time, but it means nothing coming from John Boehner.
That's because as Bernie pointed out later on in the show,
it's Republicans like Boehner who are actually "out of touch." That's a really important point, and it's what the corporate media doesn't understand about Bernie or his campaign. He's not a fringe candidate, he's not protest candidate, and despite what you might hear on Fox So-Called News, CNN, or even MSNBC when it's at its most pro-Hillary, he's about as mainstream as it gets.
A recent poll by the Progressive Change Institute, for example, shows that Americans overwhelmingly agree with Bernie on key issues like education, healthcare, and the economy.
Like Bernie, 75 percent of Americans poll support fair trade that "protects workers, the environment, and jobs."
- 71 percent support giving all students access to a debt-free college education.
- 71 percent support a massive infrastructure spending program aimed at rebuilding our broken roads and bridges and putting people back to work.
- 70 percent support expanding Social Security.
- 59 percent support raising taxes on the wealthy so that millionaires pay the same amount in taxes as they did during the Reagan administration.
- 58 percent support breaking up the big banks.
- 55 percent support a financial transaction or Robin Hood tax.
- 51 percent support single payer healthcare, and so and so on.
Get the idea? Bernie Sanders is the mainstream candidate.
And here's the thing, fifty years ago, his views on Social Security, union rights, and unemployment insurance would have put him smack dab in the mainstream of the Republican Party. Yes, that's right -- the Republican Party.
