Just how Socialist is too Socialist again?
“Here in the heartland, we like our politicians in the mainstream, and he is not — he’s a socialist,” said Gov. Jay Nixon of Missouri, who is term-limited and working to elect a Democratic successor. “He’s entitled to his positions, and it’s a big-tent party, but as far as having him at the top of the ticket, it would be a meltdown all the way down the ballot.”
“It wouldn’t be helpful outside Vermont, Massachusetts, Berkeley, Palo Alto and Ann Arbor,” said Representative Steve Cohen, Democrat of Tennessee.
“I can tell you, as somebody who ran the Democratic Governors Association, that candidates in purple states would face serious problems with him on top of the ticket,” said Gov. Jack Markell of Delaware, referring to the most politically competitive states.
“Having somebody who is identified more as a socialist in many decades of public service than as a Democrat makes it impossible for Democrats in a state like Missouri,” Ms. McCaskill said of her state, which could have competitive races for governor and senator this fall. “And it makes it very difficult for Democrats in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania and Florida,” she added, referring to states where some of the hardest-fought Senate races will take place.
“Hillary Clinton doesn’t have to explain socialism to suburban voters,” said Representative Steve Israel of New York, the former head of the campaign arm for House Democrats, whose hardest-fought races this year include districts outside Philadelphia, Washington and Chicago.
It's a bit too late for all this now though when Democrats have largely shed conservative and white working class voters. That was a deliberate program by Obama and his left-wing CAP allies.
Obama was DSA so the only difference between him and Bernie Sanders is that the latter is open about being a Socialist. The Democratic Party has been Socialist for the better part of the century. They just don't like the label. Just like they don't like the liberal label.
That's a stylistic choice. Attacking Bernie Sanders as some kind of lunatic because he has the same position on health care as Ted Kennedy is more than a little strange.
But we're in a very strange election.
Democrats are attacking Bernie Sanders as a Socialist. (Remember when they were claiming that was a racist Republican code word?) And Republicans, at least some, are defending him, for obvious reasons.
The Bernie Sanders case is that the Democrats have already embraced Socialist policies, they just need to know the label. And he's got a point. 43% of Iowa Dem caucus goers were happy to identify as Socialist. Far fewer were willing to call themselves capitalist. Quite a few willingly identified as politically correct.
This is where the Democratic Party is now. It's why it lost Congress. It's a marginal extremist party whose only electoral strength has been its ability to mobilize its network of billionaires and celebrities to put a radical left-wing extremist in the White House to rule the country as a virtual dictator.
Now Bernie Sanders wants to be the new Commissar. And the Democrats can't disavow him without disavowing Obama. And they can't disavow Obama. All they can do is go further left.