The main disadvantage for Republicans is that comparatively few Americans viscerally oppose Communism today. We are 30 years removed from the Cold War. An entire generation of Americans has not grown up with anti-Communist culture or education or the like. Communism isn’t perceived as a villain, at least not in a way that most people really care about anymore. In addition, Republicans have been crying wolf about Democrats and socialism for too long.
The GOP can bash Bernie with hammers and sickles as much as they like, but for many millions of Americans, the response will be a shrug - “So?”
I don’t believe this is true. Many young Americans learned about the Berlin Wall where the Soviet Union imprisoned and prevented people from leaving its sphere of influence. They learned about the Cuban Missile Crisis where the Rooskies tried to put nukes on our doorstep. They have seen Red Dawn on Netflix. They hear stories from their parents about how when they were younger, they had to live in fear of nuclear war. They have read Animal Farm and 1984 and understand the context.
To the extent that they don’t know, the debate will reignite with older folks educating younger folks on this. How communism means that you don’t own anything, that you are subservient to the state, and that the only god is the state.
Further, I turn 44 this year, and I learned in school to hate the socialists and communists. Anyone older than me will vote with that same idea in mind.
But to the extent that you may be right, as the article said, just because people won’t be abhorred by socialist or communism like they might have been in 1975, doesn’t mean that people have done a 180 and will be all “Go, Bernie, Go!”
ETA: I have a visceral hatred of Hitler and the Nazis, but that was well before I was born. Why wouldn’t hatred of socialism or communism be the same?
Because socialism and communism, aka free stuff, sounds tremendously more appealing than Nazism aka toss people in extermination camps. Now of course communism does lead to extermination camps, but not when it’s finally implemented properly.:rolleyes:
Socialism and communism are as different as Cuba and Canada. It’s a ridiculous comparison. Lots of Americans might see it that way (though not a majority, based on polling I’ve seen), but lots of Americans also tolerate or welcome racism and misogyny.
We also have decades of exposure to western European democracies which have better electoral systems than we do and generally healthier and happier citizenry. U.S. conservatives may want to – and apparently always have – handwave those examples away as inconvenient challenges to the archaic idea of American Exceptionalism but younger and better educated voters see a different reality than what their grandparents do.
Holy shit; it’s like you were trying to write something that would convey “clueless myopia” and you succeeded beyond your wildest dreams! Congratulations!
Younger liberals see this difference. That’s the problem that your side has in this debate. You think this, and you see the stories on TV about crazy young people protesting for safe spaces and against microaggressions on college campuses and you think that all young people think this way. They don’t. There are many more back in their dorm rooms choosing between competing good job offers wondering what all of this bullshit is about.
Maybe, maybe, if you tried this in 2008 when the economy looked like it might just crash altogether you could sell this to people. But not now when the economy is smoking. You can’t tell people how bad they have it when it’s not bad.
Further, these young kids that are protesting? You’ve got their vote anyways. Nominate Bernie, Pete, Warren, Biden, Bloomberg, the reincarnation of Josef Stalin, anyone, you have their vote already. You are trying to convince the swing voters, and socialism does not do that.
Neither does painting anything to the left of Ayn Rand as socialist. The Republicans paint everything from the minimum wage to the Post Office to public education to clean-air and clean-water regulations as socialist. At some point, enough people start tuning out the boys who cry wolf.
Is Sanders a socialist? Yes, he’s said so in the past. So what? Everyone knows that the GOP will call Bloomberg a socialist … if he’s the Dem nominee. :rolleyes: I’m not a Sanders supporter, but I can see how some feel, to use an old expression “may as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb.”
But that’s exactly what I have been saying. You can deflect the arguments that a minimum wage and postal service are socialist programs. The Dems have done so quite well and have expressly said that they are not socialists.
Sanders expressly claims it. That is the issue. The big issue. The horrific issue for the Dems. People would have believed the boy who cried wolf the very last time if the wolf jumped out and said “Yep, here I am.”
As I said earlier, the Dems are going to call any Republican nominee a racist, right? Same thing, have used it for years. So, do you think it would not have any effect whatsoever if a 2024 GOP nominee came out and said that he hates blacks and Jews?
Carville is spot on, as is Ultravires. This is the worst possible moment in the economic cycle to run as a socialist, when people are expressing more positive feelings about their economic situation than in any election cycle when an incumbent was running for reelection going back to 1992.
Look at that chart! +25 is just sick. Obama managed to win reelection fairly comfortably with a -7! If Trump didn’t constantly act like such a maniac, or we were facing President Rubio or Jeb right now, Democrats would have no chance. Facing them with an avowed socialist given these poll numbers is lunacy.
Sanders is very open about the fact he’s a Democratic Socialist. But honestly, so what? Sure, there are some people for whom the word ‘Socialist’ is like a kind of black magic incantation that makes them cross themselves and rend their garments and cry “UNCLEAN!” But who cares about them? They’re not the sort who’d ever vote Democrat anyway. Besides, half of them are on Medicare.
You say the mere word “Socialist” has some weird, talismanic power that’ll gift the election to Trump on a silver platter? I say bullshit. There’s no way you can possibly know that and it’s presumptuous of you to argue otherwise. For one thing, while Bernie calls himself a Democratic Socialist, he’s really only a Socialist by American standards. By Canadian standards he’s just a guy. And nowadays, with more and more Americans hopping over the border to buy insulin while folks like Charles Koch fight to abolish the minimum wage, maybe people might be OK voting for a guy with more Canadian attitudes. Hell, they voted for a pussy-grabbing billionaire last time so stranger things have happened.
Elections are not about the far right and the far left. It’s the swing voters.
The takeaway that you and others have is (in part) that the swing voters didn’t seem to care that Trump was a “pussy grabber” so if you nominate a socialist, so what? But once again, you are projecting your own views onto swing voters.
It’s not that swing voters didn’t mind someone grabbing a woman’s pussy without her consent. It’s that swing voters listed to the Billy Bush tape and concluded that Trump was not literally stating that he would grab an unconsenting woman’s pussy. He was bullshitting as many people do. He was saying that he was so rich that a woman would consent to him walking up and grabbing her pussy, in an obvious hyperbolic statement, and one so that he could feel good by scoring guy points with Billy Bush.
Now that explanation is simply heresy to those on the left because in your ears you hear an obvious admission of sexual assault. And I’m not here to argue against that in this thread.
What I am saying is that you have made an incorrect assumption about swing voters and want to use that incorrect assumption to argue that socialism is no big deal. The parallel would be if Trump, after being questioned about the Billy Bush tape, said, “Yes, I routinely grab strange women by the pussy, without consent, and I believe that is my right as a rich man” and swing voters still elected him. Then you would have a point. But he didn’t.
Sanders admits his socialism which, again while not a thing to get out the fainting couch like when my father was my age, is still a large net negative in the United States. Polls show that 42% of Democrats would never vote for a socialist. 42%. Now that may change when the rubber meets the road, but it illustrates how harmful it is to an electorate…especially an electorate who is doing very well financially.
You want to take away my health care and substitute it with a socialist one? I like my health care. It is very good. That doesn’t sit well with me (swing voter). As I said, if this was 2008 and me (swing voter) was unemployed and crying at night because of high mortgage payments and health care bills, maybe you win me on that. Not today when I’m doing great.
It’s much more than that. It’s also about the numerous hateful and anti-democratic things he’s said. And more notably for this comparison to Sanders, the numerous times Trump has praised authoritarians and communists, which is exactly what you’re accusing Sanders of.
Sanders may have said this stuff in the 80s, but Trump said it just within the last three years. I don’t buy that this stuff really really matters and is a huge negative for Sanders, but it doesn’t matter at all for Trump when he’s said it far more recently.