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As Democrats gear up for the 2018 election, they confront big challenges: Polls in the last election showed a general electorate that deeply distrusted the party’s leaders, while new surveys show the Democratic base has lost faith in government — and now many swing voters believe Democrats aim to help the wealthy. At the same time, the restive progressive wing of the party is looking for retribution against Democrats who refuse to turn their populist political rhetoric into concrete policy.

The intensifying health care debate in California most starkly exemplifies the intertwining trends. There, Democrats are facing allegations from progressive leaders that after a decade of promising to create a single-payer health care system, the party is now succumbing to the kind of corporate fealty that national party leaders routinely ascribe to Republicans and President Trump.

Less than a decade ago, the Democratic stronghold seemed poised to become the first state to create a universal health care program. At the end of the George W. Bush era, California lawmakers twice passed bills to create a government-sponsored health care system that proponents said would save consumers and businesses billions by cutting out private insurers.The only stumbling block appeared to be GOP Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who vetoed the bills. But that seemed to be only a temporary roadblock because the party was on the verge of electing Democrat Jerry Brown, whose father as governor created California’s low-income medical assistance program and who himself had campaigned for president promising to create a single-payer system.

Fast forward a few years, however, and the seemingly inevitable has become the apparently impossible — a stalemate that has fractured the traditional coalition Democrats have relied on to win elections in California and across the country.

As many Democrats enthusiastically promoted single-payer to Golden State voters, the party indeed engineered a complete takeover of the state’s government, giving them unprecedented legislative supermajority power to enact the legislation — even over a governor’s veto. Yet, as health care industry money flooded into the coffers of the Democratic Party’s candidates for California office, Brown has turned negative about the idea, and late last month, California Democratic Assembly Speaker Anthony Rendon halted a single-payer bill in its tracks, preventing it from being voted on by his Democratic supermajority before the legislature’s self-imposed July 14th deadline.

Amid calls for Democratic unity in the Trump era, the party’s move in a deep blue state to block a health care initiative it previously supported has prompted labor movement protests — and promises of primary campaigns or recall efforts to unseat recalcitrant Democrats. More broadly, eight years after Barack Obama mounted a populist presidential campaign and then did not prosecute any major Wall Street executives, the episode has resurrected progressives’ allegations that while Democrats may talk a good game, they are not nearly as committed to bold action as their rhetoric suggests.

Much More: http://www.ibtimes.com/political-capital/california-health-care-fight-may-show-democratic-party-future-trump-era-2562684

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