Meanwhile, “[Trump] wants to spend the 15 months between now and Election Day talking about ‘the squad’… If everyone’s talking about Omar, no one’s talking about health care or jobs… I wonder what would happen if the Democratic nominee simply refused to talk about Trump. No responding to whatever stupid nickname he comes up with. No sweeping denunciation of some deed of his that any sensible American already knows is wrong. Just the articulation of better solutions to America’s problems. Trump would go mad with the lack of attention. And maybe then, thank heaven, he’d go away.”
Frank Bruni, New York Times

“It says something about the state of the two major political parties that, while Washington was focused on President Trump’s racist tweets and his strategy to divide for political advantage, Democratic presidential candidates were engaged in an increasingly substantive debate about the future of health care. No matter how you feel about former vice president Joe Biden’s plan to build on Obamacare, which he released Monday, or Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’s Medicare-for-all proposal, which he defended in a speech Wednesday, the Democratic field has already far surpassed Mr. Trump in seriousness. His ‘plan’ to this day has not progressed beyond a promise to destroy Obamacare… as voters consider their choices, they should ask themselves who is offering something feasible — and who is selling something else.”
Editorial Board, Washington Post

Many note that “whether you like single-payer health care, don’t like it, don’t think it’s feasible, or whatever, you should understand by now that Kamala Harris would not pursue it as president… She has twice said in high-profile settings that she would eliminate private insurance in favor of a single-payer system—as the Sanders bill she’s co-sponsored does—and then walked it back the next day. And in an interview this week, she said that no middle-class tax hike would be necessary to pay for the roughly $30 trillion plan, which is just incorrect… we should stop pretending that she has any interest in pursuing single-payer—not just being for it, but actively spending the political capital necessary to pursue it—when she can barely feign interest in pretending to herself.”
Jim Newell, Slate

“It’s no wonder that likely Democratic voters see Bernie Sanders as the best candidate to handle health policy – agree or disagree, he’s consistent, and has been standing firm for single-payer as others vacillate. Why trust newcomers to progressive stances over someone who has been saying the same thing for decades?”
Bhaskar Sunkara, The Guardian

Some are urging Democrats to turn their attention to foreign policy. “What is America’s role in the world?What does it stand for? What threats does it face? When and how should it intervene in disputes? With military force, or with diplomacy? With sanctions or development aid? For any Democrat competing to succeed President Trump as president, solutions to such problems could require not only undoing the damage Mr. Trump has caused — alienating allies, cozying up to autocrats, tearing up international agreements and sowing doubts about America’s role as the lodestar of democracy — but creating a new approach to national security… By a margin of 57 percent to 40 percent, voters now disapprove of the president’s handling of world affairs… That’s a fortuitous opening if the Democrats can make their case.”
Carol Giacomo, New York Times

Regarding Bernie Sanders’s staffers, “commonsense morality perceives a significant difference between passionate young people working to advance a cause on shoestring budgets and adults trying to support a family on minimum wage jobs working for billionaire-owned retail conglomerates. That’s why the examples Sanders picks for his crusades are big companies with easily identifiable rich owners… one reason campaign work has involved such punishing hours and low pay is that it’s something a lot of people want to do. They feel passionately about their candidate, and the job is inherently temporary, so it doesn’t necessarily need to pay a long-term sustainable wage.”
Matthew Yglesias, Vox