The EconomistSeptember 7th 2019 United States 371T
o simplify just a bit, the Democratic
presidential primary has two compet-
ing ideological factions. The first is the
brand of leftism, assertive and ascendant,
championed by Bernie Sanders and Eliza-
beth Warren, which preaches ideas like
protectionism, Medicare for All, a Green
New Deal and decriminalising illegal bor-
der crossings. Arrayed against this is a
squishy moderation, exemplified by Joe Bi-
den, the former vice-president and current
front-runner, and Kamala Harris, the sena-
tor from California. Both of them have at-
tempted to please what they assume is an
increasingly left-wing primary electorate,
while not going so far as to alienate moder-
ates. The results have been mixed.
Mr Biden began his campaign with a
flip-flop on whether the federal govern-
ment should pay for abortions (no, then
yes, apparently), and Ms Harris flip-flop-
flip-flopped on whether private health in-
surance should be abolished (no, yes, no,
yes, apparently). Meanwhile the candidate
perhaps most intellectually capable of
challenging the party’s leftward creep, Sen-
ator Michael Bennet of Colorado, is gaining
little traction. “My worry is that if we’re go-
ing down the road of Medicare for All and
open borders...that could disqualify us
with the American people going into the
election in 2020,” he says.
Many in the field are fixated on Medi-
care for All, an idea for universal coverage
pitched by Mr Sanders in which the govern-
ment programme for the elderly becomes a
single-payer for everyone’s care that is free
at the point of use. Private insurance would
no longer exist. “I think what we’re creat-
ing here is a solution in search of a pro-
blem,” says Mr Bennet, who notes that 175m
Americans get health insurance through
work and that the estimated tax needed for
Mr Sanders’s idea—$33trn over ten
years—is 70% of current federal revenues.
His competing plan, known as Medi-
care xand, unlike others, unveiled years,
not months, before his presidential run,
would try to achieve universal coverage by
allowing people to buy health insurance
from the government and by shoring up
the insurance exchanges set up under the
Affordable Care Act, better known as Oba-
macare. “And if the American people hate
private insurance as much as Bernie thinks
they do, we might end up with Medicare x
displacing the private market. I suspect
that’s not where the American people will
be,” Mr Bennet adds.
Rather than being defined just in relief,
Mr Bennet also differs in what he would
spend money on. He has put two objectives
at the centre of his economic pitch: invest-
ing in the 70% of American workers with-
out a college degree and eroding childhood
poverty. Both are big, progressive-sound-
ing ideas—except that they are not much
discussed by progressives.
Help for non-college-educated Ameri-
cans, which he estimates would cost
$500bn over ten years, would come in the
form of wage subsidies, wage insurance
and grants for training. By concentrating
on work, Mr Bennet takes note of the pe-
rennial worry about welfare traps. His oth-
er big proposal, monthly cash transfers of
$300 for each American child, has gone un-
noticed beside flashier offers like a univer-
sal basic income (from Andrew Yang) or
universal child care paid for by a wealth tax
(from Ms Warren). “For 3% of the costs of
Medicare for All, you could reduce child-
hood poverty in America by 40% and end
$2-a-day childhood poverty in America,”
says Mr Bennet. Because interventions to
improve economic mobility are most effec-
tive early in life, “my starting point would
be free preschool, not free college”.
Ms Warren has risen in the polls by cre-
ating the brand of a wonkish populist with
a plan for everything (including one in-
quiring supporter’s love life). Mr Bennet’s
ideas are a foil to these. They are just as rig-
orous and technocratic, but more rooted in
pragmatism. Unfortunately, few voters
have taken notice yet. After attending the
first two debates, Mr Bennet failed to quali-
fy for the television debate that will be held
on September 12th, because of its more
stringent polling and fundraising require-
ments. Still, Mr Bennet has pledged to con-
tinue his campaign until the first actual
votes, which are not for five months. 7WASHINGTON, DC
Elizabeth Warren’s ideas get the most
attention. Michael Bennet’s are better
The ideas primary
Wonk-in-chief
O
n august 31sta man armed with an
ar-15 rifle fired indiscriminately along
a 15-mile stretch spanning Odessa and Mid-
land, two cities in Texas. At least 20 people
were injured, seven were killed. Three days
later, a 14-year-old in Alabama confessed to
killing five family members—his father,
stepmother and three siblings—with a
handgun. There is no great mystery as to
why such incidents regularly happen in
America and not any other rich country, yet
its lawmakers are reluctant to reduce ac-
cess to firearms. New research confirms
that if anything, mass shootings tend to
lead to looser gun laws, not stricter ones.
Michael Luca, Deepak Malhotra and
Christopher Poliquin, three economists,
have published a working paper matching
mass shootings from 1989 until 2014 with
state legislation on gun control. The au-
thors find that in year immediately follow-
ing a mass shooting, Republican legisla-
tures passed twice as many laws expanding
access to guns compared with other years.
In contrast, Mr Luca and his colleagues find
that overall mass shootings have no signif-
icant effect on firearms legislation in states
controlled by Democrats.
Part of this might be because guns are
simply a much bigger deal for Republicans
than Democrats. Surveys conducted by the
Pew Research Centre, a think-tank, found
that 38% of Republicans believed it was
“important to protect the right of Ameri-
cans to own guns” in 2000, compared withRepublican states tend to loosen their
gun laws following mass shootingsShootings and gun lawsDaddy lessons
When trouble comes to town