With socialist Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders’ star rising in the Democratic Party and the rampant infighting going on in Democrat circles as to whether or not that’s a good thing, the mainstream media is pushing a new narrative in advance of the upcoming Nevada caucuses, South Carolina primary, and Super Tuesday.
Their message? That Sen. Amy Klobuchar (MN) and former mayor of South Bend, Indiana Pete Buttigieg are “moderate” Democrat candidates that primary voters uncomfortable with Sanders can turn to.
For example, in the run-up to the New Hampshire primary, CNN ran a piece asserting that Klobuchar was “one of the three moderate candidates” including Buttigieg and Joe Biden. Both Buttigieg and Klobuchar were described as “moderate candidates” by NPR after their respective 2nd and 3rd place finishes in New Hampshire.
Vox’s Matthew Yglesias characterized Klobuchar as “the thinking moderate Democrat’s electability candidate.” Last month, Politico stated Klobuchar was a “moderate Minnesotan.”
Here’s a video montage of journalists and liberal commentators alike declaring both of them “moderates”:
But are they? Examinations of their records and statements while on the campaign trail paint a picture that is at odds with this narrative:
In fact, The Washington Examiner discovered Klobuchar “actually voted with socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders 87 percent of the time over the course of her Senate career.” Klobuchar’s own home state newspaper declared: “Across the spectrum, Klobuchar holds positions that until recently were considered the definition of liberalism, and even on the left edge of that definition….Klobuchar has never gotten a rating lower than 85 percent from the ADA. In three years, ADA scored her at 100 percent….These are the ADA scores of a very solid liberal, which is what Klobuchar always has been and still is.”
One review of Buttigieg’s public stances found that “From health care and abortion to guns and immigration, and from the Supreme Court to the Electoral College, the man is decidedly a radical.”
On hot-button issues like gun rights, abortion, and Medicare for All, both Klobuchar and Buttigieg are far to the left of the average moderate/centrist politician.
GUN RIGHTS:
Klobuchar stated during the first Democratic debate last year that mandatory gun buybacks were not actually gun confiscation because gun owners received “offers” from the government to “buy back” their guns. This was well before failed presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke proposed a mandatory gun buyback program just a couple of months later.
Buttigieg is a proponent of so-called “red flag laws” and a nationwide gun licensing system and, like Klobuchar, supports a ban on “assault weapons.”
ABORTION:
On abortion, both Klobuchar and Buttigieg support unrestricted access to abortion during any stage of pregnancy, although Klobuchar stated during a Fox News town hall back in May that “there are limits there in the third trimester that are very important.”
MEDICARE FOR ALL:
Both oppose the Medicare for All plans proposed by Sens. Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, but it’s primarily because they know it would never go anywhere in a Republican-controlled Senate. Klobuchar favors a “public option that expands Medicare or Medicaid” and “improving” Obamacare. Buttigieg has proposed a “Medicare for All Who Want It” plan which is similar to Warren’s and Sanders’ but also gives consumers the option to keep their employer-based or private plans, although in 2018 he was all in on Medicare for All.
While it’s possible the mainstream media is pushing the myth that Klobuchar and Buttigieg are “moderates” simply because they haven’t yet climbed to the tippy top of the socialist flagpole like Sanders and Warren have, that doesn’t mean either of them are ready to break bread and find meaningful compromise with Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).
Klobuchar and Buttigieg may sound sane in interviews and during debates in comparison with Sanders and Warren but in reality, they are not moderates. Not at all.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —