Bernie Sanders counter-programs Trump's road trip

[Donkees]

Updated 11:45 AM ET, Fri August 18, 2017

Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is set to hit the road on a three-city Midwestern tour designed to show that his progressive policies have universal appeal.

Sanders will be in Indianapolis on Monday for an event with union leader (and Trump Twitter target) Chuck Jones. Then he'll head to Portsmouth, Ohio — in a county Trump won by 37 points and which has been ravaged by the opioid crisis — and then Detroit, for an event with Rep. John Conyers.

What do Sanders and Conyers have in common? Single-payer "Medicare for all" health care, of course. Conyers sponsored the major House Democratic proposal. Sanders is soon expected to introduce his own version in the Senate.

If all goes according to plan, the trip could help Sanders show that "Medicare for all" sells in the Rust Belt — and it could also be a flattering contrast, one populist against another, as President Donald Trump heads West.

An additional Bernie-world note: Some of Sanders' most vocal allies had tweaked a Democratic rising star, California Sen. Kamala Harris, on policy recently. That agitated some within the party. But McClatchy's Alex Roarty included an important quote in a story this week, in which Sanders' inner circle distanced the Vermont independent senator from those allies' criticisms of Harris.

"Nobody part of Bernie's inner circle had anything to do with that, or would have any part of the criticism of Sen. Harris," said Mark Longabaugh, a senior aide to Sanders' presidential campaign.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/18/politics/2020-vision-bernie-sanders-midwest-cory-booker-confederate-statues/index.html