Skip to content Skip to footer

This Election Proved That Medicare for All Is a Winning Demand

Just about every congressional member this year who ran for reelection while supporting universal health care won.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez speaks to the press near a polling station during the New York primaries Election Day on June 23, 2020, in New York City.

Highlighting an interesting — and to many, instructive — electoral trend that others have spotted in the days since 2020 voting ended earlier this week, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on Saturday — just as jubilation spread nationwide among Democrats and progressives upon news that Joe Biden will be the next U.S. President — pointed out that every single congressional member this year who ran for reelection while supporting Medicare for All won (or was on their way to winning) their respective race.

As Common Dreams reported Friday, while corporate-friendly Democrats have continued to go to bat for the for-profit healthcare system that lavishes billions of dollars each year on insurance companies, for-profit hospitals, and pharmaceutical giants, a new poll this week — put out by Fox News no less — shows that 72% of all U.S. voters would prefer a “government-run healthcare plan.” And the poll is far from an outlier, with numerous surveys in recent years showing this trend.

“Polls consistently show a majority of the U.S. electorate [is] considerably to the left of both party leaderships… on issue after issue — the environment, electoral reform, [and] Medicare for All,” said Jacobin’s Luke Savage in response that poll.

Despite what “corporate front groups and lazy pundits always say,” tweeted journalist Andrew Perez, “people absolutely do not like their private health insurance.”

When it comes to the 2020 election — even though Biden himself ran against Medicare for All — the following illustration, which includes Democratic incumbents and challengers, made the connection very clear when it came to races in the U.S. House of Representatives this cycle:

As astute political observers have been pointing out for years, the United States electorate remains very supportive of universal programs and other progressive policy ideas that their elected representatives—both Democrats and Republicans — have refused to embrace.

With an increasing focus on the need for radical and far-reaching changes to the world’s economic and energy systems in order to address the existential crisis of the climate emergency, voters across the political spectrum have showed — in poll after poll after poll — their support for such action to be taken.

And as Ocasio-Cortez added to her tweet about Medicare for All on Saturday: “We’re running numbers on [the Green New Deal]” next.

Truthout Is Preparing to Meet Trump’s Agenda With Resistance at Every Turn

Dear Truthout Community,

If you feel rage, despondency, confusion and deep fear today, you are not alone. We’re feeling it too. We are heartsick. Facing down Trump’s fascist agenda, we are desperately worried about the most vulnerable people among us, including our loved ones and everyone in the Truthout community, and our minds are racing a million miles a minute to try to map out all that needs to be done.

We must give ourselves space to grieve and feel our fear, feel our rage, and keep in the forefront of our mind the stark truth that millions of real human lives are on the line. And simultaneously, we’ve got to get to work, take stock of our resources, and prepare to throw ourselves full force into the movement.

Journalism is a linchpin of that movement. Even as we are reeling, we’re summoning up all the energy we can to face down what’s coming, because we know that one of the sharpest weapons against fascism is publishing the truth.

There are many terrifying planks to the Trump agenda, and we plan to devote ourselves to reporting thoroughly on each one and, crucially, covering the movements resisting them. We also recognize that Trump is a dire threat to journalism itself, and that we must take this seriously from the outset.

Last week, the four of us sat down to have some hard but necessary conversations about Truthout under a Trump presidency. How would we defend our publication from an avalanche of far right lawsuits that seek to bankrupt us? How would we keep our reporters safe if they need to cover outbreaks of political violence, or if they are targeted by authorities? How will we urgently produce the practical analysis, tools and movement coverage that you need right now — breaking through our normal routines to meet a terrifying moment in ways that best serve you?

It will be a tough, scary four years to produce social justice-driven journalism. We need to deliver news, strategy, liberatory ideas, tools and movement-sparking solutions with a force that we never have had to before. And at the same time, we desperately need to protect our ability to do so.

We know this is such a painful moment and donations may understandably be the last thing on your mind. But we must ask for your support, which is needed in a new and urgent way.

We promise we will kick into an even higher gear to give you truthful news that cuts against the disinformation and vitriol and hate and violence. We promise to publish analyses that will serve the needs of the movements we all rely on to survive the next four years, and even build for the future. We promise to be responsive, to recognize you as members of our community with a vital stake and voice in this work.

Please dig deep if you can, but a donation of any amount will be a truly meaningful and tangible action in this cataclysmic historical moment.

We’re with you. Let’s do all we can to move forward together.

With love, rage, and solidarity,

Maya, Negin, Saima, and Ziggy