# Bernie's Soviet "honeymoon" and trips to Nicaragua and Cuba are disqualifying. **URL:** \ **Category:** Politics & Elections\ **Created:** [February 5, 2016, 6:15am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209 "2016-02-05T06:15:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 18\ **Page:** 18
**Author:** ![Rick\_Kitchen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rick_kitchen/32/522_2.png) [@Rick\_Kitchen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rick_Kitchen)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2016, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/342 "2016-02-15T23:52:52Z")
I was planning on visiting the Soviet Union in the 70s, and I was in the US military at the time. All of the hoops I had to go through eventually made it next to impossible to go there, so I gave it up. I had one so-called official telling me, “DO NOT LIE TO THEM ON YOUR VISA REQUEST FORM”, and another official telling me, “DON’T LET THEM KNOW YOU ARE IN THE MILITARY.” ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/343 "2016-02-16T04:51:24Z")
> [@elfkin477](#): > > Why is this supposed to matter to anyone? Maybe I’m too young, given the USSR fell when I was 14, but I don’t understand what’s _so_ eyebrow raising about someone honeymooning in the Soviet Union way back when or how it’s supposed to be proof of his admitted socialist bent. People weren’t forbidden to travel there (like Cuba,) right? Did only communist sympathizers take trips there in the late 80s? You are only a couple years younger than me, but I was way into politics starting in grade school. Anyway, focusing just on the USSR honeymoon misses the point. He did go to Cuba also, and went to Nicaragua and praised their “heroic revolution”. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/344 "2016-02-16T05:05:50Z")
I am not a particularly crazy lefty, but to large degree it was a heroic revolution. And the revolutionaries gave way to democracy within 10 years after fighting an insurgency illegally funded by the US. Even if you dislike some of the initial Marxist philosophy of some of the revolutionaries, you would of have to be a nutty right winger to call that an illegitimate revolution. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/345 "2016-02-16T05:14:10Z")
I agree with you on the merits. It was a heroic revolution. But I strongly disagree with your last sentence, unless nutty right wingers are like 60-70% of the electorate. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/346 "2016-02-16T05:23:02Z")
Can 60-70% of the electorate remember anything about Nicaragua other than the Iran-Contra affair? I’d love a cite on that. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/347 "2016-02-16T05:41:08Z")
From a contemporaneous [Chicago tribune article:](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/1987-09-24/news/8703120269_1_contras-aid-polls) > [@](#): > > The surprising discovery is that, despite innumerable presidential speeches, opposition protests and newspaper editorials on the subject over the past six years, most Americans don`t pay much attention to Central America. An NBC News-Wall Street Journal last year found that only one person in three knew which side the administration supports in Nicaragua`s civil war, and that 43 percent thought we were siding with the Sandinista government. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/348 "2016-02-16T05:46:23Z")
And how much did people remember about Vietnam when Kerry ran? All they will need quick refreshers on is who was allied with the bad guys from Red Dawn and Rocky IV. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/349 "2016-02-16T05:55:49Z")
You are giving me suggestions and insinuation, I just gave you a poll from the period. 43%, dude! ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:12am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/350 "2016-02-16T06:12:19Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > And how much did people remember about Vietnam when Kerry ran? > > All they will need quick refreshers on is who was allied with the bad guys from Red Dawn and Rocky IV. Which, in itself, would constitute historical dishonesty. The Sandinistas, for the majority of their early decades, explicitly followed a policy of non-alignment. They were socialist in their politics, for sure, but they were also very wary of affiliating themselves with the Soviet Union, precisely because they were focused on issues of local autonomy based on a popular revolution of the Nicaraguan people. They had no interest in being part of the Comintern, or a Latin American domino, or a Soviet pawn in the global Cold War. Your simplistic description of them as “allied with the bad guys” simply perpetuates the American foreign policy tendency, dominant since World War Two, of characterizing any and all nationalist or socialist or independence movements that ran contrary to American interests as being in league with Russians. Over time, the Sandinistas, like quite a few other originally-independent revolutionary movements, did accept intelligence and material help from Moscow, but it’s a bit hard to blame them when the biggest bully in the Western hemisphere was doing all it could to crush their nascent efforts at overthrowing the previous dictatorship. I’m sure you’re right that quite a lot of Americans would take umbrage if it were pointed out to them that Bernie Sanders supported an organization that was “allied with the bad guys,” but that historical characterization of the Sandinistas would be, at best, incomplete, and, at worst, a complete distortion of reality. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/351 "2016-02-16T06:19:42Z")
He’s arguing whether it would work, not whether it’s right. Push poll questions in the event of a Sanders nomination: How do you feel about Bernie Sanders’ support for Nicaragua’s Sandanista government? 1 , 0 ,-1 How do you feel about the Republicans’ illegally funded insurgency campaign against the Nicaraguan government? 1 ,0 , -1 ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/352 "2016-02-16T06:44:44Z")
**Mhendo** , you seem to have missed that I personally admire Ortega and the Sandinisfas. **CarnalK** , you seem to be conflating contemporaneous ignorance with levelheaded perspicacity, which strikes me as rather bizarre. We can always circle back to the Gallup finding much more recently that “socialist” managed to beat “Muslim” and “atheist”, the previous gold and silver medallists, for " most unacceptable characteristics in a presidential candidate ". A putative candidate could have Bernie’s identical platform, but be the offspring of PA coal miners who never called himself a socialist nor ever linked himself with Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries, and be FAR more electable than Bernie. That’s the sad irony of his campaign: it’s not his proposals that make him a controversial underdog. If the right were warned they’d have to run against a populist lefty, but were allowed to design said lefty’s personal background to their tasfe, it’s hard to imagine a more perfectly cartoonish straw man than this cranky old Vermonter with the Brooklyn accent and “fellow traveller” stamps in his passport. ---
**Author:** ![nani](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/58956e/32.png) [@nani](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/nani)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 7:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/353 "2016-02-16T07:00:31Z")
> [@Richard\_Parker](#): > > I know a lot of progressive Muslims and ex-Muslims personally. None of them thinks Sam Harris writes intelligently about Islam. That’s anecdotal, of course, but so is your observation. I think there is the rare figure like Hirsi Ali who likes Harris, but she is not representative of ex-Muslims, much less liberal Muslims generally. > > It depends on the parts you find persuasive. In general, I’d read some books by people who are experts on the sociology of religion. I enjoyed large parts of Lapidus’s _History of Islamic Societies._ Ansary’s _Destiny Disrupted_ is not an academic work, but it also provides the kind of historical and social context missing from Harris’s arguments. Shadi Hamid writes great stuff. Read Shadi Hamid on ISIS and compare that to the way Sam Harris or Ayaan Hirsi Ali talks about these things. It is clear who is the polemicist and who is the scholar. I’ll back up the observation that even ex-Muslims who like Sam Harris tend to do so from a more emotional/experiential level; when Reza Aslan of all people is schooling you on religion you are at a pretty low level, scholastically speaking. I heard that he wrote a book with Maajid Nawaz that I’m interested in but I don’t have super high hopes for. I strongly recommend reading [What Is Islam? The Importance of Being Islamic](http://www.amazon.com/What-Is-Islam-Importance-Islamic/dp/0691164185) by my late professor, Shahab Ahmed. It’s making huge waves in the field now. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 7:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/354 "2016-02-16T07:23:03Z")
I will add that the Sanders phenomenon needlessly short-circuits a strong and time-honored rhetorical shield for progressive Democrats: painting Republicans as hysterical McCarthyites. “My opponent is so extreme, not to mention desperate, he calls me a socialist merely for supporting policies that make life a little more bearable for working families, like access to medical care or a minimum wage worth the same as it was when Nixon was president. I’m not calling for revolution, for the end of capitalism, or for the government to seize the means of production, so it is scurrilous for my opponent to redbait me this way. The rich have nothing to fear from my program, as supply side economics has repeatedly proven to be a dud. My Keynesian demand-side proposals will empower so many consumers to be able to buy their products, the rich will keep getting richer but without the poor getting poorer. The after-tax income of rich folks will likely even rise, but the modest increase in the portion of the federal budget we ask them to pick up will fix up our crumbling infrastructure, prepare our students for the 21st century, and pay down the national debt. Win-win for all.” ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 11:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/355 "2016-02-16T11:00:30Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > **CarnalK** , you seem to be conflating contemporaneous ignorance with levelheaded perspicacity, which strikes me as rather bizarre. We can always circle back to the Gallup finding much more recently that “socialist” managed to beat “Muslim” and “atheist”, the previous gold and silver medallists, for " most unacceptable characteristics in a presidential candidate ". Are these polling results before or after Sanders’s campaign took off? ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 16, 2016, 12:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/356 "2016-02-16T12:00:25Z")
Before. ETA: But again, let’s keep in mind that Democratic turnout in Iowa and New Hampshire is down from 2008, while Republican turnout is up. So it would be going way out on a limb to assume that Bernie is benefiting from a sea change in the way the general public views socialism. There were already plenty enough socialist sympathizers within the hardcore primary electorste to explain his results thus far. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2016, 5:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/357 "2016-03-10T05:13:37Z")
Josh Marshall at TPM [makes a similar point:](http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/dem-debate-blogging-4--2) > [@](#): > > Sanders comes out of what is a very counter-cultural strand of late 20th century American politics. I know because I sort of come out of it too, at least I grew up in it. There’s a lot that is very standard in that world that sounds very alien to a lot of American voters. This is a fact. Agree with it or not, it is a fact. ---
**Author:** ![Hank\_Beecher](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hank_beecher/32/7275_2.png) [@Hank\_Beecher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hank_Beecher)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 4:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/358 "2016-03-16T04:33:00Z")
[Sanders wrongly assumes town hall questioner is Muslim](http://www.politico.com/blogs/2016-dem-primary-live-updates-and-results/2016/03/bernie-sanders-town-hall-religion-assume-220746?cmpid=sf) So, according to Sanders, brown vaguely South Asian lookin’ guy = automatic Muslim. Why in THE fuck would he ascribe religious beliefs to someone based on ethnicity in the first place? What an anachronistic, stereotyping, windbag. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [March 16, 2016, 10:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209/359 "2016-03-16T10:31:31Z")
Oops. Clearly Hillary’s not the only Democrat susceptible to foot-in-mouth disease. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/bernies-soviet-honeymoon-and-trips-to-nicaragua-and-cuba-are-disqualifying/745209.md?page=17)