The aim of this article is not to relitigate that question.
He states after five paragraphs relitigating that question before continuing to relitigate that question for the bulk of the article.
According to a poll from last year, an overwhelming majority of respondents, 76 percent, said they would not vote for a socialist candidate, while only 24 percent said they would favor such a candidate. That’s a big hole to dig out of.
The Hill??? Really?? If you had named the source of your reference I wouldn’t have wasted the electrons to click on the link. You now owe me those.
Frankly, the only chance Bernie has to get back into this race is to deemphasize his socialism
Exactly wrong.
Trump has quite accurately defined the goals of the GOP, as verified by their reluctance to distance themselves from him or his policies. America is, almost in total unison, rethinking all of the supply side neoliberal fascist nonsense they have been spoon fed for a generation. We should thank him for that by lightening his responsibility if we, and the democratic process, survive long enough to do so.
Bernie will have a lot of chances to define himself in debates and campaign rallies. Trump will have what opportunity to define him? Twitter? KKK get-togethers?? Even many conservatives only read or listen to his snarky nonsense for comedic relief now. His propensity to lie non-stop has not fared well for him, as was recently evidenced by the overwhelming rejection of his version of our imperialistic efforts to overthrow Iran’s government. His total failure to live up to even one of his campaign promises, not just his promise to disengage us from perpetual war, is not lost on any serious voters.
This election will be all about Trump and have little to do with Trump simultaneously. Just about any other candidate with any credibility will be our next President. The real battle in this campaign is for the future direction of the Democratic party. It’s move to neoliberalism and corporate support has cost it dearly in the last couple of decades as Republicans made clean sweeps in elections across the country and gained over a thousand seats of both national and state/local government. This catastrophic failure is attributable to the party’s sharp swing to the right, losing its definition as a worker’s party in its zeal to acquire deep pocket donors, competing directly with the GOP for many of those.
Bernie has in this campaign, unlike in ’16, made no bones that he is fighting for the soul of the Democratic party as well as for the Presidency. The fact that most other Dems in the race are now promoting platforms that were deemed “socialist” in ’16 is evidence that Bernie has overcome the stigma attached to that identity sufficiently to counter any accusation that Trump might throw at him, especially as he and GOP hardliners continue to threaten any lifeline left to struggling middle-class voters.
American style capitalism has failed and Americans feel it deep in their guts, and their bank accounts. They are confronted with that systemic failure every day, from a younger and better-educated class of homeless, especially veterans, to Go-Fund-Me campaigns to pay for life-sustaining drugs and medical treatments for people they know. Trump has elevated the conversation around “late stage” capitalism to the point of concern for even many self-proclaimed capitalists. Some of those are previous big donors to the GOP.
Radical change is not only more attractive than it has been since the ’30s but is likely the only way out of our dire situation, which has always been first in Bernie’s priorities. He is not the most “electable” candidate, but he is exactly what America needs and people, especially the more at risk younger generation, sense that. Your reluctance to take a psychopathic dishonest bully to task head-on displays the type of sheepish and cowardly politics that has enabled so many like him to rise in positions of power.
Bernie’s one fault is likely his failure to more widely communicate his ideology long ago on the national stage. Even if he didn’t win, his courage and grit would have been a much better example for Dems to follow than milquetoast incrementalist candidates the party has an affinity for. The party, and the oligarchy it serves, is long overdue for a return to its roots in FDR’s style of Democratic Socialism.
