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Stephen Gottlieb: The Candidates, The Voters And The Media

Commentators are scoring Democratic candidates by how "moderate" or "far left" they are. That's nonsense. Let me count the ways. 

Perhaps most important is that most voters don't have a worked out platform. They are actually trying to judge sincerity. Some of us may prefer to choose policies. But most voters feel much more comfortable judging sincerity. So while commentators think Warren is too far to the left, the voters like her. What they are seeing is that she cares about them. That's important. They want the winner to work for them and they figure that if the candidate cares, they'll choose the right policies. That after all is the elected leaders’ job. Voters never aligned with Reagan's policies but they liked and trusted him. That's one of the reasons Republican appeals to what Reagan did seem hollow. They aren't Reagan.

There's another equally important reason. Presidential candidates' policy preferences tell us what they will try to do, not what will happen. That's partly out of any official's control. Legislators, administrators, judges and changing circumstances have a large hand in that. Obama wanted a public option. I still do. But he couldn't get it. What mattered is that he wanted medical coverage for all of us and he did his best. I appreciate that. And it is a big contrast with the absence of any Republican plan.

So it’s sensible for us as voters to ask whether this candidate will move the political system in a good direction, pulling and pushing despite opposition to get the best possible result. So a candidate like Warren is to the left of the Congress and thank heavens!

What I think the details really can show is whether the candidates are able to think things through. I do understand why she wants Medicare for all even though, if I were in her shoes, I wouldn't push for it. Medicare for all guarantees a good plan for all of us because equality means that if it's going to be good for us, it has to be good for them, too. And of course a single payer system is cheaper to administer. So I admire her dedication to getting good care for us all even if I can see disadvantages. But no candidate will get everything they want. So we'll get a compromise between "moderate" ideas and caring motives. A president isn't a monarch, and shouldn't be.

One more reason: moderate and left are sloppy terms. If I like one leftish idea that doesn’t make me a leftist. If sometimes I support competition like Republicans do, that doesn’t make me conservative. Voters might disagree about one thing or another but like and trust a candidate. Or they might mislabel a candidate's whole platform based on one idea and jump away. The media are being sloppy. There are ideas to the left of current American politics that Americans like and some they don't. They do like medical care. They do want government to make sure that we all have access to important and essential services, whether or not the proposals started out on the left. Sloppy characterizations don't help. Clarity and precision are much more useful.

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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