It was a close-up look at a historic campaign: After decades where socialists were the enemy, a “democratic socialist” had come to town as a serious candidate for president.
Advertisement
The New Republic’s Jeet Heer doesn’t see the same cleavage between the two Democratic rivals that Klein does. “No President of the United States can do this alone”, he told them, “That is why what I call our campaign…which is unique in american history…I call it a political revolution”.
But as Sanders comes tantalizingly close to being within the margin of error of Hillary Clinton in the polls, he’s decided he needs to push democratic socialism like he means it. Sanders’ plan is to explain that socialism consists of things like public libraries, fire departments, and police departments. A socialist wants to greatly expand the power of the government to control the means of production and then divvy up the benefits in ways it sees fit. “We have to make the movement to correlate what we’re talking about, because on every one of the major issues I am talking about, the American people agree”, Sanders said. Will it stop Sanders from attracting attention among a few on the left?
Michiko Minoura of Coralville is a Sanders supporter and she thought Clinton was “gracious” when Sanders said during the debate that the country was exhausted of hearing about Clinton’s emails.
He has called for greater economic equality, including more taxes on the wealthy and corporations and more government spending on programs such as free college tuition and a higher minimum wage.
Bill Maher: “They like Medicare”. He has been hearing that he’s “just a Democrat” for 30 years.
In fact, these Bernie Sanders Democrat policy prescriptions are exactly the opposite of the policies needed to restore such booming economic growth.
Sentient people can’t help but notice that the whole point of the 20 century was that Socialism and Communism do not work for working people.
Undeterred, Maher ran down Sanders’ political shopping list. Aside from readjusting the COLA calculations, Sanders said he wants to “scrap the cap”, meaning he would lift the current cap on taxable income of $118,500. He even goes so far as to compare Sanders” taxpayer-funded development plan with Ronald Reagan’s trickle-down economics: “This “managerial radicalism” with its technocratic bias and its corporate concern for expansion is bourgeois to the core – and even brings the authenticity of traditional “socialist’ canons into grave question”.
Until recently, the word “socialist” occupied a special place in American politics: Along with “liar”, and “hypocrite”, it was a rare insult so low-down that it couldn’t even be used on congressmen. That alternative won’t be realized through Democratic politicians whose goal is to “save capitalism”, however.
Advertisement
“In certain respects”, Sanders interrupted, jumping right into income inequality – one of his major platforms.
