What percentage of the Democratic voter’s identify themselves as socialists?
The poll, which showed that 57% of Democrats have a positive view of socialism compared to just a 47% favorable view of capitalism. This means that new Democratic candidates if they want to win in primaries will be embracing or at least tolerating socialism, even though the vast majority of the voters in the USA prefer capitalism. We could be seeing a shift further left.
Every American politician has been tolerating socialism, in some forms, for decades.
I prefer capitalism but I have a positive view of socialism. I certainly don’t identify myself as a socialist. and–to answer the OP’s question–I doubt many Democrats do.
Here’s the link to the actual Gallup survey:
…A majority of Democrats have viewed socialism positively each time Gallup has measured the concept since 2010, and – despite the increased visibility given to the concept this year – those views have not changed substantively. But the drop in Democrats’ positive views of capitalism this year has for the first time left Democrats more positive about socialism as a concept than about capitalism…
This is sort of the fault of Republican branding. When Obama was trying to get universal healthcare passed, many Republicans cried “socialism!” When Medicare was passed, they cried “socialism!” Funding pre-K care…socialism! Family leave…socialism!
So, voters listened and said, well, I like those things, so I guess I have a positive view of socialism. I doubt many or any voters who identify as Democrats are for the state ownership of property, for example. It’s just that many parts of the social safety net have been decried as socialism, and so voters may have a positive view of that.
OP, how do you think socialism is defined in these voters minds? Something like a strong safety net, a Denmark-like society? Or, state ownership of property, or something close to Venezuela or Cuba?
Depending on definition, they’ve been tolerating it anywhere from 0 to 100 years.
The oldest definitions of the term would seem to encompass the following values:
I think it’s fair to say that if you’re trying to square that with modern day definitions, which span the range from this original sort of meaning to hardline Conservatism in some countries to massive social nets in other countries, that you’re basically just wasting everyone’s time. Using a word that has no generally accepted definition to describe your platform is useless and just gets you compared to the USSR.
Silver Lining, whatever the number may be of those who identify as Socialist, there are in reality only a handful and the rest are Democrats that don’t understand words, not Socialists.
Well that depends. The USA was built upon capitalism, and because of it, a safety net is provided to the retirees or under productive able bodied people who just want to get though life getting free stuff.
We’ll never be a Denmark like society. Socialism may work when it’s a homogenous society with a relatively low population and resources are shared. ( That is not us ) But is Denmark a good example? Denmark’s prime minister says it has a "market economy” and is tired of Bernie Sanders socialists slurs
For the USA voter who identifies with being socialists, I think it’s a collection of has not’s. Lower education types, people who don’t think they can move up the economic ladder because they are either unqualified or too lazy to work their way up, so they hear the Karl Marx redistribution of wealth speech, rebranded with 2018 lingo and say to themselves, that will help me. Yes, I’m a socialists. That form of socialism will never work.
We could be seeing a split between primary Democratic voters, those who identify with being a socialists, want many things for free, paid for by those in capitalism, and those who want a larger percentage of the tax revenue going to socially funded programs, but support capitalism.
Tolerating socialism, on a lower level or leaving programs like Medicare or social Security alone, sure.
Identifying them as socialists, and winning elections by drawing into the support of socialists? This is a new trend.
I don’t think you answered my question. Here it is again:
OP, how do you think socialism is defined in these voters minds? Something like a strong safety net, a Denmark-like society? Or, state ownership of property, or something close to Venezuela or Cuba?
My view is that many Democrats likely associate socialism with universal healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and similar programs, since Republicans have been calling those programs Socialist!! for decades. They don’t identify it with state ownership of property, Cuba, Cambodia, or Venezuela.
So, when asked, “Do you have a positive view of socialism?”, what’s triggered in their minds is all the stuff the Republicans have been screaming about – “Oh, I guess they mean universal health care, Social Security…, yeah, I have a positive view of that.” “Do you have a positive view of capitalism?” “I guess they mean tax cuts for the wealthy and for corporations, bailing out the banks after the banking crisis, Bernie Madoff, and so on…not that positive.” Note, that’s not my view of capitalism, but I could see a glib response from someone not that tuned in having a negative view of “capitalism”, without really understanding that capitalism, with proper restraints, has given us much wealth.
What’s your view?
As far as I can tell, nobody in this country can define the word “socialism” so color me dubious.
Please cite that they identify as socialists. The question according to your OP was whether they have a positive view of socialism.
“Nobody” is, of course, an exaggeration but I think you are basically correct here. There is not going to be a substantive debate in the upcoming election about what it means to be a “socialist”. It will mainly be used by Republicans to tar any Democratic candidate who uses the term (and probably most who don’t use it).
Only in the sense of word usage. Enough people who remember the hundreds of millions of people killed in the name of Socialism have now died off of old age that it’s politically tenable to use the term again, and so people are.
But in terms of party platform, there’s no significant change between (for example) when I joined this board and today, judging by what most of the lefties here are posting.
Silver Lining, please tell us in what sense the US is “not homogeneous”, and how that lack of homogeneity prevents socialism from working.
Preferably without dredging up anything more than, say, 18 months old.
100% percentage of this Democratic voter identifies as a grammar Nazi. What percentage of the OP thinks that “What percentage of the Democratic voter’s identify themselves as socialists?” is correct punctuation? Did the OP go to high school and learn about possessives and apostrophes?
Well, that and slavery.
Oh, and also all that land that became available after the previous residents… well, they were encouraged to move along.
Heck, if some Americans consider the fairly tepid policies of Barack Obama to be socialist, they’d have to consider the social safety network of Canada to be rampaging runaway socialism on par with Cuba. I don’t know why they freaked out about a small island 90 miles south when to their immediate north was an entire communist totalitarian state with single-payer health insurance and no abortion laws.
I typically end up concluding that they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about, they just want to sound cool to each other.
What proportion of Republicans voters Identify themselves as deplorable?
Given the analysis of the average Trump voter’s likely reaction to a N-word type by Fox’s policy analyst, Jessica Tarlov, the argument seems to be “all of them”.