If he ran in the Democratic Primary wouldn’t that require him to become a Democrat.
I’m a bit familiar with him and have family in Vermont.
For decades he’s insisted he’d never join the Democratic party and at this stage I doubt he would.
I doubt he’d run as an independent because IIRC, he was quite pissed off at Nader in 2000 though he wasn’t too open about that for obvious reasons.
Depends on how you define socialism. If we define it in Marxist terms, then yes, it’s as bad as fascism. If we define it as the soft social democracy of 1970s Sweden, then it’s merely stifling, rather than a crime against humanity.
In any case, who would want to rehabilitate the term “socialist”? I’d thought that ideological battle between socialism and free markets was settled. Unless there are some socialist capitalists running around, in which case I have no idea what the point is.
No, the ideological battle between communism and capitalism was settled. We already have some socialism, as do most countries, to varying degrees.
You’re using the term in an extremely broad fashion. Explain to me the difference between socialism and liberalism, because what you describe as socialism just looks like liberalism to me.
Unless of course you are claiming that liberalism and socialism are one and the same.
Socialism is social (e.g. government) control of an industry (like health care or defense, both of which are at least partly socialized in most countries, including in the USA).
Liberalism is a political philosophy which emphasizes individual civil rights, free elections, free press, (and in the classical sense, free property and free market); and in the modern American sense of the word, liberals generally believe that government has a role in making society more equal and more just, and in alleviating social ills like poverty, and liberals generally reject the philosophy that the free market can solve these problems.
Did you really not know the difference?
You haven’t really articulated practical differences though. I’m aware of those definitions, but citing what countries do with health care or defense as socialism doesn’t really make sense, since those policies predate Marx. Socialism is taking industries that have traditionally been private and placing them under government control. Especially if the reasoning behind the switch to public control isn’t because of practicality, but due to ideology.
While there are remnants of socialist policy in many parts of Europe, there are no mainstream socialist parties in Europe anymore. All the major left-wing European parties are now liberal and capitalist. So not only shouldn’t the term be rehabilitated, it doesn’t need to be. It’s simply a historical oddity.
Of course the fight between capitalism and socialism is still going. For instance, we still have a socialist energy industry, and all attempts by the Democrats to impose the free market on it have been shouted down by Republicans.
I grew up in VT and still read my hometown’s local newspaper, etc. The best way to explain his political affiliation is that he campaigns as a socialist, in order to be able to claim that he is an independent whose agenda is not dictated by one of the major parties, but more or less votes and otherwise legislates in lockstep with the Senate’s Democratic Caucus, which he belongs to.
I’m a Dem and Sanders is the last person on earth I would want to run or president. Basically he’s our Sarah Palin or Michele Bachmann and he would most certainly hurt the Democratic party in 2016 in the same way the Tea Party hurt the GOP in 2012.
When right wingers say that somebody like Hillary Clinton or Bararck Obama is a socialist, they’re just pulling it out their ass. But Bernie Sanders really is a Socialist.
Its quite obvious Senator Sanders is the latter not the former.
How is Sanders comparable to Palin or Bachmann? I might see someone making a case for Kucinich but Sanders is both a fairly intelligent man and his ideological positions are solid.
Sanders has been rated by one Washington publication as only the 32d-most liberal Senator.
Maybe Dennis Kucinich and Al Sharpton will be among the few Democratic challengers to the Inevitable Clinton Juggernaut in 2016.
That’d make one hell of a four-way debate.
Yeah, Sanders is kinda weird in that he calls himself a socialist, but he’s actually just a liberal. Kucinich is much closer to being a socialist, but he doesn’t call himself one.
Then again, Kucinich cares too much about civil liberties to ever be an effective socialist.
The best explanation of the difference between socialism and liberalism/progressivism that I ever read is about 100 years old and comes from the Milwaukee Journal;
“Conservatives fight socialism blindly … while the Progressives fight it intelligently and seek to remedy the abuses and conditions upon which it thrives.”
Conservatives don’t see a difference because both Socialists and Progressives are pointing out social problems that Conservatives either deny exist or would just as soon see ignored, but they do so with different intent and for different purposes.
I see a difference. I also see that the real reason the two get confused is because naive liberals often get used by reds and then end up being the first lined up against the wall when the revolution comes. Meanwhile, the liberals outside the particular country applaud the social progress made by the newly minted socialist dictatorship, while tut-tutting about the human rights abuses(but criticizing America more).
I’m sure that’s why Harry Truman (who was well to the left of Obama on issues that matter) pretty much started the Cold War by creating NATO and sent troops to Korea, JFK denounced the missile gap, LBJ sent troops to Vietnam, and Carter boycotted the Olympics in Moscow. :dubious::rolleyes:
Presidents aren’t a great example, since they have to have enough sense not to be fringe crazy in order to get elected. Hollywood celebrities like Harry Belafonte could just spout off about the joys of life under Soviet domination.
In other words people who have no actual effect on policy. Should Ted “Obama is a subhuman mongrel” Nugent be used as a yardstick for Republican opinion? :dubious:
To the extent that he does represent a lot of Republican opinion, yes.
My first post was a bit vague, and in hindsight probably not my best work. What I meant was that Sanders would probably alienate moderate voters, including moderate Democrats, in the same way that ultra-conservatives such as Palin and Bachmann have alienated moderate Republicans.