We've had over 6 years of the president being called a socialist...

[daleanime]

I find it hard to believe that any one really thinks that would stop any would be voters.

"Well, I like his positions on SS and education, loved that he was against the TPP, but a Social Democrat? Too scary."

[redstateblues]

1. Obama is not a Socialist. Bernie is. Big difference

[daleanime]

2. Will they pronounce it differently on Faux?

[Cali_Democrat]

11. If everyone believed what Fox said

Obama would have lost.

A lot of people don't buy their bullshit. The people that buy everything they say are the 25%.

25%...Bush's approval rating when he was leaving office while the U.S. economy was imploding. These folks would never vote for a Dem or support Dem policies no matter what.

[daleanime]

13. Exactly.....

problem being that none of them want to think for themselves. Too willing to give up that burden to some one else.

[Live and Learn]

28. Nope. nt

[Nay]

40. Yeah, but it doesn't matter what either of them really are, since the audience is

pretty dumbed down. They wouldn't know a socialist from a socialite. However, if they can hear what Bernie has to say, it won't matter what they call him because what he says will be more interesting than any label. In fact, the 'socialist' label has been so overused that I'd be surprised if it held the same power as it did 10 years ago.

[nc4bo]

3. I think any one with a (D) behind their name will always be a commie, socialist,

anti-American sob in the eyes of the enemy.

So if they're gonna do it anyway, why not give 'em a real commie, socialist, anti-American sob to whine about?

[daleanime]

5. Sadly that's true for a chunk of americans.....

it's what happens when mock news airs 24/7.

Too bad we're not going to give them a 'commie, socialist, anti-American sob', we'll give them Bernie instead.

They'll thank us later.

[nc4bo]

15. !

[cascadiance]

26. Republicans that take money from the Koch brothers are more directly connected to commies...

... than Bernie is, as the Koch Brothers built their empire on 1%er commie dictator Joseph Stalin, who made a big deal of fighting and killing off real democratic socialists like Trotsky! Koch Brothers have similar beliefs of supporting the 1%ers like Stalin did, whereas Bernie is farther from a commie like Stalin than any of the other candidates, including Hillary, since the DLC that she and he helped put in power of the Democratic Party also had a lot of funding from the Koch brothers as well as individuals from their empire in it as well.

[treestar]

41. Yes. Trying to pin conservatives down

on the difference between a socialist and a liberal Democrat is usually an exercise in futility. You ask them when Obama, etc. said the government should own the means of production. They start theorizing that regulation is interfering with their use of property by regulation and that is enough to make it the same as if the government owns it.

[brooklynite]

4. Difference: Sanders self-identifies as a Socialist...

...and you're not going to have the time or resources to explain to low-information voters what the difference is between a "socialist" and a "democratic socialist" is...

[daleanime]

6. Not even going to try to, why would we?

The ones who will fall for that were never going to vote Democratic any way.

And like I said earlier, how is the word going to sound any different when they say it about Bernie instead of Obama.

[OilemFirchen]

12. Plenty of Democrats won't vote for a self-described Socialist.

Is that even contentious?

[daleanime]

16. I don't think that's the case.....

Democrats have continued to support a 'socialist' long after he stop supporting us.

Why would you want it to be contentious? You kind of lose me there.

[OilemFirchen]

20. "Contentious" as in "in contention".

There's really no need to prove the obvious, but here's the latest polling:

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- As the 2016 presidential election field takes shape, more than nine in 10 Americans say they would vote for a qualified presidential candidate who is Catholic, a woman, black, Hispanic or Jewish. Less than half of Americans would vote for a candidate who is a socialist.

I don't have the internals for this. Nonetheless, do you believe that no one in that 50% is a Democrat?

[daleanime]

21. The word, I understand....

why you would want some thing to be so, not so much.


Poll can be very helpful, they can also be messaged. I take them with a pound of salt, and I'm on a low sodium diet.


If, and I think it's when, Bernie wins the nomination, that means more Democrats voted for him instead of any one else, right?

[OilemFirchen]

24. Why are you making this complicated?

I stated that many Democrats would not vote for a self-described Socialist. I observed that it's not in contention. It's not. It's an empirical fact. You suggested otherwise. You were wrong.

Your disregard of polls is irrelevant. I provided one only to verify an otherwise observable reality.

And yes, if Sanders wins the nomination, that means that more Democrats voted for him instead of anyone else. Likewise, if there is more spandex in your tutu, there is not less spandex in your tutu.

[aspirant]

27. Polls are not FACTS

They are estimates and guesses at best

[daleanime]

39. Not making it complicated, unless if by complicated you mean....

that I'm not agreeing with you. And if that's the case you have my sympathies, you must lead a very complicated life.


And though if you take every poll as gospel it can't be too bad.


Trust me, I learn a long time ago, spandex is a privilege, not a right.

[Live and Learn]

29. But Bernie is not a socialist. He simply admits that some of the policies what he supports are

socialistic. These are policies that most Americans also agree with but don't like to admit they are socialistic. The fact that Bernie speaks the truth seems to be abhorrent to some even on DU. Why the heck are people so afraid of a word?

[brooklynite]

31. Because the word, which he DOES describe himself as, has a negative resonance...

...for some people who don't hang out in political discussion blogs.

There are two candidates in US History who lost 49 States. They were both perceived as too fringe left by voters.

[Live and Learn]

32. Untrue, he does not. Repeating the untruth doesn't make it any less so.

Per Wikipedia:

Sanders is the longest-serving independent in U.S. congressional history. A self-described democratic socialist,[4][5][6][7] he favors policy proposals similar to those of mainstream social democratic governments in Europe, particularly in Scandinavia.


If we re-branded Clinton as a corporatist or warmonger would people vote for her?

[brooklynite]

33. What part of "self described" is confusing to you?

And as for the "rebranding" of Clinton, the anti-Clinton folks are already using both terms. But since she isn't and doesn't use either term, it has no impact at all.

[lovemydog]

7. A good bumper sticker would be

You hate socialists? I want a real one. Bernie.

[daleanime]

8. I like it.

[gratuitous]

9. We could do with a little socialism right about now

Rapacious vulture capitalism certainly isn't working, and hasn't for 35 years or so. Let's redistribute a little of the Wealth that Labor has created back into the pockets of the working people. That will mean some of the leeches on Wall Street won't get those fat paychecks they've grown accustomed to, but you know something? Fuck them.

[daleanime]

10. Amen, Brother/Sister, Amen....

[Rex]

14. Republicans love to laugh at socialism, they made it a dirty words a long time ago.

Last edited Wed Jun 24, 2015, 01:03 AM - Edit history (1)

Reagan being the piece of shit used car salesman that he was - laughing at Jimmy Carter calling for protections for the elderly and insurance for everyone.

Reagan was a good ratfucker.

[daleanime]

18. You do realize....

they will try to discredit any thing we do, right?

So should we use that as an execuse to do nothing? Or should we just go head and do what we want to anyway?

[Rex]

22. That is just a video showing Reagan the turncoat dissing Carter over a socialist idea.

Who said it was being used as an excuse? We should just do the right thing. Pretending socialism is the boogeyman is what the GOP hopes for every time we run for office.

You do nothing, I am doing something about it.

[daleanime]

23. After some confused sleep.....

I'll do something, not sure what, but like I said confused.

[Rex]

25. Sleep can be a good thing.

Obama will survive, the GOP is very anti living human. A proven track record that is coming to an end. That is why I don't think they have any chance at the WH. Too many people are in dire straits to just ignore the sloganeering over something that works.

Obama proved the ACA works, that bad ol' socialist!

Night night.

[lumberjack_jeff]

17. I remember the story of the boy who cried wolf.

Republicans have shown the hoi polloi that socialists aren't so bad - they get you medical insurance.

[daleanime]

19. True, good point.

[Live and Learn]

30. Socialistic Democrat is bad but supporter of a war based on obvious falsehoods is okay?

I really don't get it.

[daleanime]

34. I hear you.....

confuse me too.

[whatthehey]

35. But no instance of him agreeing, which is somewaht important.

[daleanime]

37. Do you really think...

what ever he said matter to those folks?

[pampango]

36. As was FDR and probably all Democratic presidents since. To a republican conservative it does not

take much liberalism to become a 'socialist'.

From the Roosevelt Institute:

President Obama is not the first president to be smeared by conservatives for suggesting that the country prospers when we all prosper.

One of the consistent arguments that conservative Republicans are hurling against President Obama and the Democrats this election season is that President Obama’s support for federal intervention in the economy, through such programs as his ill-fated jobs bill or the Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care Act, represents an attack on individual liberty. They claim the promotion of government intervention in the economy is somehow “un-American” and that what the president really wants is to turn the United States toward socialism. We have even heard the charge, uttered by one right-wing conservative Congressman, that a significant number of liberal members of the House of Representatives are in fact “members of the Communist Party.”

The use of such tactics to discredit those who believe in government intervention in the economy is not new, of course. Franklin Roosevelt faced similar charges when he ran for re-election in 1936. Like President Obama and those in Congress who favor government programs to put people to work and ensure that all Americans can enjoy a healthy and productive life, FDR’s New Deal—including his passage of unemployment insurance and Social Security—was attacked as “undisguised state socialism” by one senator. Others went so far as to insist that FDR was a communist, including FDR’s erstwhile colleague Al Smith, who, as one of the founders of the right-wing American Liberty League, warned in the 1936 election that “the people could either breathe the clear fresh air of America, or the foul breath of Soviet Russia.”

... as FDR well understood, it was the failure of the free market to provide the average American with basic economic security—in other words, a decent job at a decent wage—that got us into the crisis in the first place. Prosperity, in short, was not dependent on the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but rather on the economic strength of the millions of men and women who make up America’s vast working and middle class. For without their purchasing power—or what he called the “fair distribution of buying power”—a strong, vibrant economy was not possible.

Moreover, the same principle held true for the health and maintenance of America’s democratic system of governance. Indeed, as FDR saw it, the events of the 1920s and 30s made it obvious that “democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.” Viewed from this perspective, the real threat to our individual liberties came not from government, but from the “heedless self interest” of those in positions of vast wealth and power, whose greed crushed individual initiative and so restricted “the field open for free business” that private enterprise “became too private….it became privileged enterprise, not free enterprise.” In such a system, the political equality the American people once enjoyed became “meaningless in the face of economic inequality,” and as such “life was no longer free; liberty no longer real; men could no longer follow the pursuit of happiness.”

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/franklin-d-roosevelt-socialist-or-champion-freedom

[daleanime]

38. +1