mobanmarketAs 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders last week introduced fresh policy proposals like his Green New Deal and a new plan to revitalize labor during a high-profile campaign swing that stretched from early-voting Iowa to the delegate-rich primary state of California, one of the senator’s top advisors and surrogates, national co-chair Nina Turner, was on the U.S. East Coast spreading the campaign’s message and listening to voter concerns at small town halls like the one she held in Portland, Maine on Thursday.
Just blocks from the Common Dreams offices in the downtown area, Turner hosted a small crowd of just over 120 people who filled the seats inside the meeting room at the historic Mechanics Hall building, where she told them that what’s needed more than anything right now is a “moment of national transcendence for the United States of America”—a moment she said only the people, inspired and working together, can create.
“People got it wrong if they don’t understand. It’s not just about who has the best ideas, it’s about who can excite.”
Sitting for a brief interview following the town hall, Turner explained that such a transcendent moment is required because so many people she meets nationwide are feeling so worn down by the harsh reality and “heaviness” they feel living in the era of President Donald Trump.
“It hasn’t even been four years but it feels like it’s been eight already,” Turner said.
“So we’re going to need the next president not just to have good plans,” she continued, “but also to have a mindset that recaptures the imagination of the American people and remind them that of the all the great things that we’re fighting for in this particular moment of America’s history and the world history, that it is going to take all of us and that we can do it.”
Acknowledging that Americans throughout the country’s history have overcome many difficult obstacles and dark times, Turner said it is now time to do that again. People need to imagine a place, she said, where civil conversations can take place once again and “imagine a place where we can dream bigger dreams.”
Offering the issue of healthcare as one example—and the specific call by Sanders for Medicare for All—Turner said the people she meets on the campaign trail are not afraid of bold solutions to pressing issues that impact their daily lives.
“The best way I can describe it,” she said, “is by telling the story a good friend of mine shared with me. She was 24 years old when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Now at that time you had to be off your parents’ insurance at the age of twenty-five and her birthday was less than two weeks after the diagnosis.” And what the friend was advised, Turner continued, raising her hands and shaking her head: “Quit school and get on welfare and maybe you might get the medical coverage that you need to save your life—to preserve your life.”
She explained that she hears stories like this all across the country. “Everybody has some pre-existing condition—that’s called being human,” said Turner and that is why she believes the campaign’s message is resonating so much for people.
“We’re asking people to believe that in the United States of America we can have a system that is run by the government and not by corporations, or that you could have healthcare that’s not attached to your job—that’s a big leap,” she said. And while that can be “a lot for people to imagine that,” Turner added, “Yeah. People are ready to hear that.”
As polls have consistently showed, Medicare for All remains a widely supported solution (even across party lines) to the nation’s healthcare woes—especially if the question is phrased without the baggage of industry-friendly framing.
Turner believes that Sanders has a lot to do with the movement on the issue in recent years—but that it wasn’t easy, she said.
“Sanders started this journey a long time ago,” she explained, to elevate a single-payer solution nationally when he ran for president in 2016.
“Look at it now,” said Turner. “You can’t find—or there are very few—Democrats running that don’t have some version of Medicare for All, because they know this is what’s on the hearts and minds of the people. Now there’s only one candidate that’s got the real deal, but everybody’s talking about healthcare.”
Turner also said Sanders continues to be a leader when it comes to the other top policy concern for many voters: the planetary climate crisis—an issue she said best exemplifies the need for a politics that is intersectional and a candidate who is transformative.
From before 2016, through that campaign when he called it the most existential threat to the country and the world, and up until today, argued Turner, Sanders “has always been there” on climate.
“He was on the cutting edge then and he is on the cutting edge now,” she explained. “The senator understands we can’t have any of these great things—Medicare for All, reforming the criminal justice system, you name it—if we don’t have an Earth for ourselves right now in our time and to leave to future generations.”
Turner characterized Sanders’ Green New Deal Proposal—which he was introducing at a climate-focused town hall event at the time of the interview—as “a win-win” when it comes to the environment and the needs of workers and organized labor.
“We have to put people back to work to do this,” Turner said. “Millions of people all across this country will benefit from us doing good and doing right by Mother Earth because we put them to work.”
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