Washington Post issues a blistering editorial about Bernie Sanders
The Washington Post has issued a blistering editorial of Sen. Bernie Sanders' presidential campaign.
Published on Thursday night, the editorial titled "Bernie Sanders's fiction-filled campaign" calls into question parts of the Vermont independent's platform for being exaggerated or not fully explained.
The paper acknowledged that support for Sanders in Iowa has expanded because he's acting as an "uncorrupted anti-establishment crusader."
"But Mr. Sanders is not a brave truth-teller. He is a politician selling his own brand of fiction to a slice of the country that eagerly wants to buy it," the editorial said.
On Sanders' statements about how Wall Street and corporate money are not helping the middle class, the editorial points out that Wall Street has already been forced to undergo a series of reforms since the financial crisis that are intended to lessen the risk big banks pose to the financial system.
The editorial also said Sanders has made "fantastical claims" about how he would apply the European social model to the U.S., and the paper questions where the massive savings in healthcare costs from his Medicare-for-all plan would come from.
And it takes him to task for not explaining "how he would go about rationing health care like European countries do."
The paper goes on to question how Sanders would achieve the so-called "political revolution" he's aiming for in Washington in which Congress would agree to his proposals.
"This self-regarding analysis implies a national consensus favoring his agenda when there is none and ignores the many legitimate checks and balances in the political system that he cannot wish away," the paper said.
Sanders' success so far, the editorial said, "merely proves that many progressives like being told everything they want to hear."
The editorial comes just days before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.
