The progressive paradox

It’s no paradox at all

When you need that Big Pharma feeling. Ianactually photo

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As of late, meaning since the beginning of the pandemic, a lot of people have expressed confusion about the progressive viewpoint toward the pharmaceutical industry, also known fondly around here as Big Pharma.

For decades and decades, Democrats railed against Big Pharma and their bloated profits and bluntly called them an evil among us. Before the pandemic, as Marc Thiessen has pointed out, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) referred to the pharmaceutical industry as “the biggest bunch of crooks in this country,” then went on to accuse the industry of “literally killing Americans.”

Kamala Harris, somehow a senator prior to the pandemic, called pharmaceutical executives “nothing more than some high-level dope dealers” who didn’t care one wit about public health. Joe Biden bashed the “greed of drug companies” for years.

So why is it that, since the pandemic, Democrats have been among that industry’s most vocal supporters. They live—and maybe die—by the Covid vaccine, they supported mandated vaccination, they line up behind massive vaccination schedules for youth, they are horrified by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s campaign to discover the real causes of autism and to stop the overmedication of America’s youth in general.

Oh yeah, don’t try and touch Big Pharma’s liability immunity. In 2024, when conservative Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced a bill to remove all federal liability protections for the Covid-19 vaccine and to preserve the ability of injured Americans to access pre-existing compensation programs, not one Democrat signed on in support of the legislation or co-sponsored it. Nineteen Republicans jumped at the chance of co-sponsorship.

Sure, the uni-party killed the bill, but that tells us all we need to know about how progressives feel these days about Big Pharma. They’re an item, as they say.