Here is a new possible campaign slogan for the Sanders campaign: “Vote for Bernie Sanders, and you’ll get a more honest president than Barack Obama.” It’s not saying much considering that Obama’s flat-out lie that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” was so at odds with the facts that it was voted Lie of the Year for 2013 by “fact checker” PolitiFact, ordinarily a reliably left source.
But Sanders came right out and said in no uncertain at a campaign event in Iowa that he would “absolutely” take away union workers’ right to bargain for health care plans when asked. Here’s the exchange between the Vermont senator and an audience member at an event earlier today:
Bernie Sanders: I want to be frank I don’t want to … oh, I guess the guy could tell me why I’m crazy. …
Audience member: Wouldn’t the Medicare health care plan … wouldn’t that take away our right to bargain for our — our medical benefits?
Sanders: Yeah, absolutely it would. It’s not a bad thing.
Will this presidential election be the most important in American history?
The video ends before Sanders has a chance to explain why his proposal is “not a bad thing,” but in the end that would seem to be a value judgment that the voter gets to make — not the candidate.
In any case, this is the second unhappy run-in Sanders has had with big labor. After boasting last March that his would be the first major presidential campaign to have a unionized workforce, three members of his staff filed charges in July with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) alleging that the campaign had violated a collective bargaining agreement with unionized workers.
Then again, in the above video, he does invite audience members to tell him why he’s crazy, so maybe it is his ultimate intention to plead insanity if he wins the Democratic nomination.
