Bernie Sanders at the California Democratic Convention; Boos Pour Down on John Delaney

Bernie Sanders

By Robert Wenzel

Following 10 presidential candidates on Saturday, who addressed the crowd at the California Democratic Convention, Bernie Sanders stepped to the podium on Sunday morning. He was heavily tanned and appeared rested and lit into Trump and subtly jabbed at Joe Biden.

As he started his speech, he called President Trump the worst president in modern day US history and then said Trump was

• a racist
• a sexist
• a homophobe
• a religious bigot

The crowd cheered but it was impossible to compare the cheers to those received on Saturday for Elizabeth Warren and Kamala Harris since on Sunday the official work of the delegates was done and the audience was only about 60% as large as it was the day before.

After his attack on Trump, he took a jab at Democratic presidential front-runner Joe Biden, who did not attend the convention, by saying "As you all know, there is a debate among presidential candidates who have spoken to you here in this room and those who have chosen for whatever reason not to be in this room about the best way forward. We cannot go back to the old ways. We have to go forward with a new and progressive agenda."

And then he launched into more lefty talking points, saying:

• Large corps like Amazon need to pay their fair share
• Prescription drug prices must be cut in half
• Healthcare is a human right and the country needs a universal single-payer system

He also devoted one line to foreign policy saying "We must end the endless wars," but going nowhere near the detail that Tulsi Gabbard has made with her anti-war position.

Then the Mayor of San Antonio, Texas, Julian Castro, also a presidential candidate, took the stage and covered the same lefty talking points, as most of the Saturday speakers, with particular emphasis on universal pre-K and universal higher education. Two lefty demands that I hold among the most evil and dangerous. Government should be nowhere near education.

The final presidential candidate to speak was John Delaney, the US representative for Maryland's 6th congressional district. He literally walked off the stage to boos. It was so bad that the acting California Democratic Convention chair Alexandra Gallardo-Rooker chastised the crowd for not being respectful.

What triggered the crowd was that Delaney echoed John Hickenlooper on Saturday and said that Medicare for all is not the answer that it is not good policy or good politics.

The boos began. He tried to clarify by stating that he was for universal healthcare that it does not make sense to kick off private insurance the 150 million people that have it. The boos continued. Delaney was clearly stunned. He tried to say more in the half-minute he had to speak but the boos were too loud and as his time ended he walked off to boos.

I am not sure how reflective the California Democratic Party is of the rest of the Democratic Party but it is clear these people are hardcore lefties if not outright socialists.

Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of EconomicPolicyJournal.com and Target Liberty. He also writes EPJ Daily Alert and is author of The Fed Flunks: My Speech at the New York Federal Reserve Bank and most recently Foundations of Private Property Society Theory: Anarchism for the Civilized Person Follow him on twitter:@wenzeleconomics and on LinkedIn. His youtube series is here: Robert Wenzel Talks Economics. More about Wenzel here.