Last week, the labor organization Workers Strike Back sent an email about the desperate need to build a grassroots movement for Medicare for All. The Democratic Party, they argue, is simply not a reliable actor on the issue. It refuses to mount a serious policy fight to get a program like this passed, instead relying on empty and cynical gestures that do little more than string the along the base.

The recent reintroduction of a Medicare for All bill by Senators Sanders and Jayapal is the latest example, the email continues. These reps could have pushed the bill under Biden, while the Dems held Congress and COVID-19 was exposing the American health care system for the sham it is, but they chose not to. Introducing it now under Trump and total Republican control of Congress guarantees it will go nowhere. It is just another performative antic to drum up excitement and get demoralized liberal voters to dutifully check the box next to the “D” in 2026 and 2028.

From my perch as a wizened and addled old man facing his twilight years, I think the Workers Strike Back crew is spot on. The Dems have long promised transformative change while out of power only to turn around and abandon such promises once they achieve it. In fact, they’ve have been doing it my entire life, and not just on the healthcare issue but on all issues.

The Democratic OG for this type of thing is the big dog himself. After being decimated by the Regan Revolution of the 1980s, the Dems needed a charismatic leader to have any shot in hell of getting back in power in the 1990s after a decade of being in the minority. They found it in Bill “Slick Willy” Clinton. The other thing they needed was a broad coalition, and this required some bones to be thrown to the party’s progressive base.

Under Bubba and the Dems’ collective leadership, the party claimed, left-leaning voters had a lot of goodies to look forward to. NAFTA was going to get relitigated to protect workers and the environment. Universal healthcare was going to be enacted. And the corrupting influence of money in politics was going to be curtailed.

Yet lo and behold, once in office, Clinton moved toward the center like a hungry fly going after big pile of shit. He didn’t renegotiate NAFTA’s main provisions, instead pursuing legally unenforceable side deals. He and his wife, Hillary “Basket of Deplorables” Clinton, failed to build the requisite coalitions to overcome opposition to their healthcare law. And he was cowed by the lobbying dollars of various industry groups, presiding over a period of rapid deregulation that would have made Paul Ryan so excited he would have needed a new pair of pants.

Clinton’s Democratic successor would play a similar bait and switch game. Obama, perhaps the most disingenuous politician in my lifetime, already had the wind at his back when he ran for office in 2008. The Great Recession was ripping through the country at the time, obliterating jobs, hollowing out communities and ruining lives. Yet he still promised a progressive agenda to excite the left. Promoting economic justice. Codifying Roe. Enacting strident climate measures. And, of course, finally delivering universal healthcare. These were all carrots held out to our dumb horse mouths leading up to the election. Had a bulk of this agenda been enacted, it would have made us a better country. Sadly, little was.

The ploy sure paid off at the ballot box, though. Democrats rode into Washington in 2009 with a filibuster-proof majority. Yet as with Clinton, Obama either tracked to the center or cut deals with special interests and Republicans, leading to an agenda that either watered down or abandoned his original promises. No financiers went to jail for the Recession. The Paris Accords went unratified. Healthcare became a jumbled mess. And workers largely got the big, fat shaft while the big banks received $700 billion in TARP bailouts. Under his leadership, the Democrats did the exact opposite of what his very own chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, once advocated. They let the most serious crisis of our lifetime “go to waste,” squandering the opportunity “to do things that you think you could not before.”

12 years later, our most recent Democratic president would behave in a way that played out eerily similar to Obama. Biden’s administration came to power in 2020 amidst another global crisis. In this case, it was the COVID-19 pandemic, which brought the economy to its knees and set off wide ranging shockwaves that are still being grappled with today. His pitch to voters during this wild time was organized under the hysterical banner of “Build Back Better,” and it included a whole host of progressive priorities. Lifting up the middle and working class. Free community college. Student loan forgiveness. Passing the Equality Act. Criminal justice reform. The promises from Biden and Harris came fast and furious as the COVID-riddled bodies fell that year. And it worked, albeit barely. Biden squeaked into the White House, buoyed in part by a promise to rebuild the country into something that was better than what came before.

Not a single one of those things really happened, not that anyone should have been overly surprised. If you have ever followed Biden’s career in the Senate, which began right around the time of the McKinley administration, you would know that such an agenda would have required him to undo much of his life’s work. Taking action on criminal justice reform, for example, would have been in direct rebuttal to his 1994 crime bill. Eliminating student debt would been in contrast to his actions in 2005, when he helped make it harder to discharge student loans in bankruptcy. These are just two examples of an ignominious career that includes many more.

Biden’s presidency proved to be disappointing though even by his own low standards and reputation for limp-noodle centrism. There were countless issues where he reneged, rolled over or cow towed to the rich. The American Rescue Plan in 2021, for instance, showered businesses and the wealthy with forgivable loans. Meanwhile, its accompanying minimum wage increase was blocked by the Senate Parliamentarian, whose rulings suddenly became the word of God to the Democrats rather than the opinion of an unelected bureaucrat.

That same year, 2025’s liberal hero Corey Booker began negotiations with the likes of Tim Scott and Karen Bass on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act. These went nowhere. And community college and student loan forgiveness? Forget about it. Biden and the Democrats dropped the former from the Build Back Better agenda like a piping hot spud coming out of the oven. As for the latter, Biden fucked it up so badly that it basically doomed the effort to failure. It wasn’t until 19 months had passed in his administration that he finally proposed some relief that included “means testing.” This is one of the Democrats’ favorite policy mechanisms, as it restricts eligibility, makes it overly complex and technocratic and, in this case, made it much easier to mount legal challenges and eventually torch the effort.

At the conclusion of the email from Workers Strike Back, the group wrote that when it comes to achieving the dream of universal healthcare, the Democrats represent a “dead end.” And in reviewing the history of the last three times the Democrats held the White House and Congress, you’d have to be “daft like Jack” to hold a different opinion. The Democrats have continually fumbled the ball when it has mattered most on healthcare, but that’s really just the tip of the iceberg. The promises they’ve made on a whole host of issues have been repeatedly foiled by the party’s ineptitude, its timidity and, of course, its flagrant corruption. And there is no reason to think that the next election cycle will be any different. I commend Workers Strike Back for pointing out that dispiriting fact about the party and for attempting to lay the groundwork for a badly needed alternative.

Learn more about Workers Strike Back here.