Common Dreams: Kamala Harris Is Not a Red-Baiter

[crazytown]

You know how high the stakes are when Common Dreams talks about putting our differences on hold to defeat Trump.

Kamala Harris Is Not a Red-Baiter, She's Just Not a Socialist (Like Most Americans) ...

It will be necessary, at some point in the summer of 2020, for all of the contestants to come together behind the winner of the primary, in order to defeat Trump and his Republican enablers.I have been making these arguments for the past three years, going back to Bernie Sanders's entry into the 2016 presidential race.

I think it is a huge error to exaggerate the differences separating "democratic socialists" like Sanders and "progressive liberals" like Elizabeth Warren. And while I think vigorous debate about principles and policies is essential, I think it is also a huge error for these debates to become acrimonious or to become centered on abstract labels rather than concrete principles and policies. For it will be necessary, at some point in the summer of 2020, for all of the contestants to come together behind the winner of the primary, in order to defeat Trump and his Republican enablers. This will not be the end of debate, for the 2020 election will not be the last election—hopefully!—and democracy is an ongoing and unfinished project. But it will be the time to put some of the most heated debates on temporary hold, and to work together to support a Democratic victory.

As a left liberal who retains some sense of connection to his neo-Marxist roots—and who rejoined Democratic Socialists of America, after a 20-year hiatus, on the day after Trump's election—I personally lean in the general direction of Sanders and Warren, whose platforms are the most "left" of the many Democratic contenders.

There is much legitimate excitement about the revival of the left, and I strongly believe in supporting this energy and excitement; as I said only last week in praise, "New Blood Brings New Energy to the Democratic Party." But I've also seen and experienced too much in my six decades to fully share in this enthusiasm. And I am painfully cognizant of the fact that while there is much discontent, and while the left has made headway in some important quarters, American society in 2019 is not fertile ground for democratic socialism. More importantly, the American state is being governed—or rather, mal-governed—by an aspirational fascist who, while he has no majority, does have a very strongly mobilized base, and has the power to create emergencies, and is doing his best to wage a campaign of vicious red-baiting.

https://www.commondreams.org/views/2019/03/02/kamala-harris-not-red-baiter-shes-just-not-socialist-most-americans

My thoughts on this: 1. Senator Sanders has painted a target on his back for little return. Card carrying Socialists, the Democratic Socialists of America don’t consider him a socialist: He’s ‘A New Deal Liberal’ https://www.dsausa.org/weekly/a-dialogue-should-dsa-endorse-bernie-sanders-before-the-convention/

2. If Trump is still around, the 2020 campaign looks like being the biggest red scare since the 1950s. Trump has already signalled where he’s going: ‘Socialist = Communist’

But when the RW starts saying Sanders wants to turn the United States in Venezuela, it will do no one any credit to agree then quote a ‘I am not a socialist’ statement by their preferred candidates. Red baiting backfired on Democrats in 1920 and 1952. It’s divisive, immoral and above all, comterproductive. My 2c.

[CrossingTheRubicon]

1. The huge error would be allow so-called "Democratic Socialists" to conflate their ideology...

with that of the liberal Democratic Party.

We should draw bright line distinctions between our party and the political ideology of the Democratic Socialists of America, an organization that forthrightly casts liberal Democrats was their enemy.

Socialism is anti-liberal. We are a liberal party.