What is Bernie Sanders socialism, and is he making it less scary for U.S. voters?

[mak3cats]

In another era, such a strong showing by a socialist would be unheard of. It was newsworthy enough in 2006 when his election to the U.S. Senate was announced with headlines like this: “Vermont’s Bernie Sanders Becomes First Socialist Elected to U.S. Senate.”

Sanders is unafraid to use the word to describe his politics, which pundits have spent months trying to explain. Could it be, some wonder, that the days of “socialist” being a dirty word are gone?

“‘Socialist’ has never been a complimentary term in American political discourse, but it has reached a particularly high level of toxicity during the past six years of President Barack Obama’s administration,” Politico wrote in July.

“While the president and his defenders have spent a great deal of time parrying that attack, Bernie Sanders is using the socialist label to his advantage, packing venues around the country and establishing himself as Hillary Rodham Clinton’s leading challenger ...”

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/nation-world/national/article33402468.html#storylink=cpy

My favorite part is where George Will is cited as calling Bernie a "poser" because he's not all THAT socialist!

[gordianot]

1. The ultra rich have lots of Socialism, I want some too. n/t

[merrily]

4. No socialism for you!

NEXT!

[no_hypocrisy]

2. It's *democratic* socialism.

Democratic socialism is a political ideology advocating a democratic political system alongside a socialist economic system, involving a combination of political democracy with social ownership of the means of production.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_socialism


OTOH, sometimes I think Bernie's talking social democracy more than democratic socialism.

Social democracy is a political ideology that supports economic and social interventions to promote social justice within the framework of a capitalist economy, and a policy regime involving welfare state provisions, collective bargaining arrangements, regulation of the economy in the general interest, redistribution of income and wealth, and a commitment to representative democracy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_democracy

[merrily]

5. That is a quandry. However, inasmuch as he says either socialist or Democratic socialist, I am

hesitant to introduce a term he does not use.

[merrily]

3. 47% of Americans of all parties polled said they would have no problem voting for a socialist, BUT

a Democratic Socialist is different from a Socialist.

Here are some sources that might help:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/12806844 (many of the replies are very good)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/128043026 ("vanilla" socialism)


Bottom line: Bernie wants Medicare for all, he wants to expand Social Security, he likes the kinds of programs that comprised the New Deal and the Great Society.

[mak3cats]

6. More from the article...

This part directly quotes George Will from a column of his in June:

“Is it obligatory to take seriously his pose of being an “independent” and a “socialist”? It gives excitable Democratic activists a frisson of naughtiness to pretend that he is both. Actually, he is neither ...

“If he is a ‘socialist,’ who isn’t? In olden days, socialism meant something robust — government ownership of the means of production, distribution and exchange. Then, voters and reality being resistant to such socialism, the idea was diluted to mean just government ownership of an economy’s ‘commanding heights,’ principally heavy industries, coal mines, railroads, etc.

“Today, ‘socialism,’ at least in Western Europe where the term is still part of the political lexicon, is the thin gruel of ‘social democracy.’ This means three things — heavy government regulation of commercial activities, government provision of a ‘social safety net’ and redistribution of wealth through progressive taxation and entitlement programs.

“For America’s Republicans, opposition to these three ubiquitous realities is avowed but not constraining. They neither plan nor pose a serious threat to any of the three, so they, too, can be called ‘socialists,’ which is a classification that no longer classifies.”

[RoccoR5955]

7. I wish to hell he was a REAL socialist

Then we could get rid of the damn corporations, and capitalism all together. After all, it is capitalism that is killing us all. Simply by the fact that capitalism's main "belief" is in infinite profits with infinite resources, and the fact that there are limited resources on the little blue ball, we call Earth, makes capitalism a massive fail.
Earth is still our only home. There is no Plan(et) B.

Maybe if we got rid of capitalism, and started to socialize EVERYTHING, people would learn how to share, instead of being greedy. I am so sick and tired of all this me, me, me stuff, and everything being about money, it's sickening.

[eridani]

8. Socialism = public goods for everybody. Not just the rich, and not just the white n/t

[jessjgonz]

9. Bernie needs to have a "What is Democratic Socialism" section on his website and needs to educate...

If Bernie gets past the primaries and is the democratic nominee, he will be attacked and inundated with multiple smear campaigns aimed to scare the American voter away using his "Democratic Socialist" title. This will put Sanders on the defensive and detract from his message. In my opinion, he needs to openly discuss and educate the American audience on what exactly it means to be a "Democratic Socialist" and how he differentiates this from a "Socialist", a "Capitalist", a "Communist" and a "Fascist"..etc. In addition to that, he needs to articulate this in a relatable manner and point out the benefits of such ideology.

I've been building websites for very large and small businesses for years now and have also been a content strategist on top of that. I use audience research to guide and inform my website content decisions. That being said, I strongly feel that Bernie should be proactive and create a dedicated section within his website to explain these things. He needs to get ahead of this BOFORE the right-wing machine does. If not, I truly fear that this will be more than a slippery slope for him and his campaign. One of the main reasons the corporate media isn't covering Bernie is that they don't take him seriously because they feel that a "Socialist" has no chance to be POTUS whatsoever.

Thoughts?