Last night, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.) played the hits. Just one problem: Nobody cared.

He asked Democratic National Convention delegates to recall the early days of the pandemic—when "people were being evicted from their homes" and "children in America were going hungry"—and how Democrats came together to pass the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which provided "$1,400 for every man, woman, and child in the working class," offered "emergency assistance" to help small businesses stay operational, and included eviction protections to keep people in their homes. "I say all of this not to relive that difficult moment, but to make one simple point. When the political will is there, government can effectively deliver for the people of our country," said Sanders. "We need to summon that will again—because too many of our fellow Americans are struggling every day to just get by."

The halcyon portrait Sanders is painting ought to stun. The stimulus checks doled out by the government were a massive contributor to the inflation that the Federal Reserve has just now successfully clawed back, through painful interest rate hikes. The eviction moratorium, imposed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, was "dropped into place with virtually no public discussion of the limits of bureaucratic power, the rights of private property holders, [or] the unintended consequences" that might arise, wrote Reason's Christian Britschgi.