PBS Democratic Debate: Live Coverage

Ideology is notoriously hard to measure — especially for presidents like Franklin Roosevelt who didn’t serve in Congress — but it looks like Sanders would stand out as quite a bit more liberal than the last three Democratic senators who became president. Looking at congressional voting scores provided on voteview.org (for economic issues), Sanders stands out from the rest of the group. With a score of -.368, Obama was more liberal than John F. Kennedy (-.308) and Lyndon Johnson (-.236). (The more negative a score, the more liberal a candidate was.) Sanders was even more liberal than that. His score was -.523 in the 113th Congress.

Julia, would Sanders be the most liberal president since FDR?

Making prescription drugs more affordable is a winning issue for voters from both parties. A Kaiser Health Tracking Poll released in October found that 85 percent of democrats and 73 percent of Republicans surveyed said that the president and Congress should prioritize making sure that high-cost drugs for chronic conditions are available to people who need them. Similarly, 74 percent of Democratic and 56 percent of Republican respondents wanted “Government action to lower prescription drug prices.”