The Lies Corporate Media Tell When Bernie Sanders Is "Extreme" and Trump's GOP Is "Mainstream"

Sens. Bernie Sanders and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. "Sanders is not the radical extremist," writes Buell. "It is the Republican Party that has abandoned the center. The party has abandoned even its own voters." (Photo illustration: CD/Getty Images)

The modern Republican Party is as extreme 

as any major party in our history.

By

John Buell

Is a candidate a centrist? This question matters because many voters like to think of themselves as moderates or centrists. Other voters, not heavily engaged in the political process, are responsive to labels. Therefore the candidate who captures the label in the eyes of the corporate media has a leg up. But before accepting media designations more careful scrutiny of the candidate and the historical context is in order. The question of who is a centrist should be broken down. How do the views of the candidate stack up against grass roots perspectives, consensus views within the beltway, and historic or international norms.

By these standards the Republican Party is as extreme as any major party in our history. Given the unpopularity of its views not surprisingly it has ceased any pretense of practicing parliamentary democracy. And recognizing its own isolation many members of the party are willing to countenance any available means to hold power and promote its agenda. Applying comparable standards one can reasonably conclude that the Sanders campaign stands well within the confines of earlier democratic reform movements. Consider Sanders on Social Security:

Social Security is the most successful government program in our nation’s history. Before Social Security was signed into law, nearly half of our senior citizens lived in poverty. Today the elderly poverty rate is 8.8%…Social Security is not just a retirement program. It is an insurance program that protects millions of Americans who become disabled. Incredibly, the only source of income for about 3 million persons with disabilities is a Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefit that averages just $35 a day. Today, 28.5 percent of disabled Americans are living in poverty. We have got to do a lot better than that.

Sanders wants to increase the benefits that lifetime low-income workers will receive so that they’ll be higher than the national poverty level. He would finance the provisions by increases in taxation of the income above the current Social Security tax cap.  

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