Sanders on Elections and Socialism : How We Win

Over the weekend, Bernie Sanders spoke to the How We Win conference, a gathering of democratic socialist elected officials and their staff in New Orleans sponsored by the Democratic Socialists of America Fund, Jacobin, the Nation, and other partners. Below is a transcript of his remarks.

Thank you for inviting me to say a few words. Let me begin by thanking all of you for having the guts to run for public office. It’s a lot harder to go out and knock on doors to represent constituents with the problems they face seven days a week. So I want to thank you very much for that. Despite the horror in the White House right now, they’re out there all across this country. We’re seeing strong progressive growth. It is not just Zohran Mamdani in New York or Katie Wilson in Seattle. From coast to coast, you are seeing progressive democratic socialists standing up, taking on the establishment and winning elections.

And one of the great secrets of the corporate media is that right now in the House of Representatives, the Congressional Progressive Caucus has about one hundred members, including dozens and dozens of very strong progressives. That is the result of the hard work all us have done over the last number of years.

I’ve been asked to give you some advice. What I’m gonna tell you is probably what you already know. Number one, here is a radical idea — do your job that you were elected to do. Now, I’ll tell you a story. Here is the story. I was elected to be mayor of Burlington, Vermont; won it by ten votes way back in 1981. We had a strong foreign policy. We had exchange programs. We dealt with national issues. But I’ll never forget there was an article in the local newspaper and the report asked some guy, “But what does it mean? What do you think about having a socialist as your mayor?” And the guy said, “Well, I don’t know much about socialism, but I do know they’re getting the snow off of the streets a lot faster than they used to.”

You gotta do your job. If you’re on the city council, the school board, the state legislature, you gotta do it. And if you do your job well, people will give you the latitude to talk about many, many other issues. But don’t lose focus regarding the job that you are elected to do.

Second of all, establishment Democrats have the brilliant idea that the only people they can talk to are establishment Democrats. They literally have lists of people: “Don’t knock on this door; don’t knock on that door. Only on these.” I strongly disagree with that suggestion. Knock on every door in your district. And what you’ll find when you do that is you’ll have the right-wing people slam the door in your face. You’ll have some unpleasantness. But by and large, what you’ll find is that there is a lot more commonality of interest than you might have appreciated. In my view, the reason Donald Trump is president of the United States today is not because people voted for a trillion dollars in tax breaks for the 1 percent or massive cuts in health care. He is the president of the United States because of Democratic establishment candidates’ failure to provide a real analysis and agenda that meets the crises that we face today.

Establishment Democrats believe that you can tinker around the edges, you can tell the world how terrible Donald Trump is, and that’s fine. But right now, what the American people understand is that übercapitalism — an oligarchic form of society, which is what we have today — is a disaster for the working class of this country. We don’t have to tinker around the edges. We have to create a very new form of society.

So for just your average person out there, you are in many cases going nowhere in a hurry. You understand that with real inflation accounted for, wages are basically the same as they were fifty years ago, despite a huge increase in worker productivity as a result of all of the expansion of technology. And almost all of the gains of that new technology have gone to the 1 percent. And ordinary workers know that there’s something wrong with 60 percent of our people living paycheck to paycheck while Elon Musk owns more wealth himself than about the bottom 52 percent of American society. They know that.

Here is a radical idea — do your job that you were elected to do.

They know that there’s something wrong when we have a campaign finance system that is totally corrupt and allows billionaires in both political parties to buy elections. That’s a broken system. I say these things because you’re gonna have Republicans who understand this as well. They understand if you look at the basic necessities of life — just think for a moment: you’re living in the richest country in the history of the world, and it cannot even provide the basic necessities of life for working people.

Just take a look at the health care in your community. Talk about health care. Everybody will tell you that despite spending twice as much per capita on health care as any other nation, the health care system is totally broken. Everybody knows that. The educational system is largely broken, and the childcare system is a disaster. Kids can’t afford to go to college, or they’re leaving school deeply in debt. Public schools are under enormous pressure. Teachers are underpaid. They’re dealing with all kinds of disciplinary issues, kids who come from troubled families or are acting out in school. We are dealing with a situation where our food system, just nutrition . . . we are the most obese and unhealthy nation on Earth because you have a food industry that makes huge profit by selling our kids crap, and the price of groceries is soaring.

People understand that. I flew in from the National Airport in Washington; there was a four-hour delay because they couldn’t figure out how to de-ice the plane. All over the country you are looking at basic problems people are struggling with. The system is failing. Our job is not to run away from that reality but to offer a real alternative. Because in my view, what the future is gonna be about isn’t establishment Democrats. All over Europe, for example, the establishment parties are fading away. The struggle is going to be between the Trumpists of the world — right-wing extremism — and a democratic socialist alternative, which recognizes the problems that we face and provides concrete and real and bold solutions for working families.

So what Donald Trump does is go, “Yeah, we got a lot of problems. And the problem is undocumented people, the problem is the trans community, the problem is that we have Somalians who are ‘garbage.’” That’s what demagogues do. They take the problems that we face — often that they cause — and then you blame a powerless minority. Our job is to recognize the problems are real and to put the finger on the real cause of the problem, which is the greed of the oligarchs in this country. So that’s where we’re at now. And it ain’t gonna be easy. Especially with Trump in the White House.

To summarize, the American people know the system is broken. They are hurting. They can’t afford groceries. They can’t afford health care. They can’t afford education. They can’t afford a lot of things. And at the same time, the billionaire class has never had it so good. The establishment Democrats cannot talk about these things because, very often, they’re getting funded by the billionaire class. So what we have gotta do right now is get out into the streets. We gotta talk to our people — allpeople, not just people within our zone of comfort. And we’re gonna be providing real solutions to the crises that we face. So once again, what you have done is extraordinary. I thank you so much and congratulate you for getting out on the streets, for winning elections, and for standing up for working people.

• Bernie Sanders
• socialist elected officials

 

10 Economic Myths Debunked #7- Socialism

The Dangers of Fascism in 2024

  

 

North Star  has  a new post up by Fred Glass on the dangers of Fascists in the 2024 Elections.

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/2024-the-fascist-danger

 

Topics include

No Lesser of two evils approach.

Retaining the possibility of a socialist movement. 

 

Recall that the rise of fascism in Germany and German American Bund in the U.S. was based on the first targets being the opposition and destruction of communist ( and socialists) movements. 

 

 

Socialism Has a PR Problem, and It Can Be Solved - LA Progressive

Socialism Has a PR Problem, and It Can Be Solved - LA Progressive: Socialism Has a PR Problem - Even as openly socialist candidates are winning political power, the right is working hard to equate

Talking Socialism with Alexandreia Ocasio-Cortez

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on her way to speak at NYC's Women's March. [Photo by Corey Torpie]

 

TALKING SOCIALISM | Catching up with AOC

MARCH 19, 2021 BY DON MCINTOSH, PUBLISHED ON DEMOCRATIC LEFT.

 

And so it was that first meeting that I felt, ‘Okay, this is something that’s real.’ Also, in the history of New York City and in communities of color, when you have the Young Lords and you have this organizing heritage, there has historically been tension between DSA and these organizing collectives of color, whether it was Latino and Puerto Rican collectives, Chicano collectives, black collectives…. It was like, “Oh, it’s these white folks. [LAUGHS.] There was this historical fissure. But it really felt like a moment where we were coming together. And so when I would see DSA showing up providing real structural support at BLM rallies, or support for abolishing ICE, where we felt like there wasn’t this class essentialism, but that this really was a multiracial class struggle that didn’t de-prioritize human rights, frankly, I was really impressed. And I felt like it was something worth being part of.

My run for Congress, so much of it was based in coalition building. In the New York City context, I wasn’t a DSA candidate that was homegrown from the start. I went through a process of earning the DSA endorsement. And that was in addition to stitching a collective together of the movement for Black lives and the movement for immigrant rights. Our congressional district is half immigrant, extraordinarily working class and just incredibly diverse in the Bronx and Queens. Along with Senator Sanders’s campaign, which I also proudly worked on, prior to all of this, you know, all of that, I think, really contributed to this moment.

And, for me, there’s a real distinction between us saying that we’re about something and us really being about it in our actions. And it was really that distinction, in the action and in the praxis, that made it distinctive to me and made it something to be a part of.

Read the entire interview on our blog

https://www.dsanorthstar.org/blog/talking-socialism-catching-up-with-aoc

Or on Democratic Left.

https://www.dsausa.org/democratic-left/aoc/

 

 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez: 'We Have To Keep Organizing, We Can Not Stop' ...

DSA's newest Congresswoman

In a galvanizing victory speech to an electrified crowd of admirers, Ocasio-Cortez waved away the latest criticism—of her admittedly skeletal plan to pay for an expensive agenda—with the assurance that will finds a way. "They will always call the ambitious naive, they will always call the ambitious uninformed," she said, but the overwhelming excitement her primary win engendered matters—precisely because it was not partisan. Neither party does enough for its constituents, and her victory emphasized a widespread readiness for a fresh political approach, and the possibility of real change that new course presented. 

"Our deepest challenges are not left and right, they are not red and blue; they are top and bottom, they are right and wrong," she said. "It is not good enough to throw a rock at our neighbor's yard, we need to clean up our own house."

She also acknowledged disappointment at the evening's mixed bag of returns: Democrats won the House, but lost key gubernatorial races across the country to Donald Trump-approved candidates: Georgia Representative Stacey Abrams seemed poised to lose, narrowly, to Brian Kemp (although Abrams had not conceded at time of writing); progressive Tallahassee mayor Andrew Gillum lost to the same windbag who underestimated Ocasio-Cortez.

Ventura Fire - Disasters and Socialism

By Richard Neve

Fire, City and Demographics

Wild fires are seasonal phenomena here in California. From October through April "Santa Ana" winds blow hot dry air westward from the interior  towards the more populated coastal regions. These types of fires “burn fast and dangerous,” spreading almost as fast as the wind blows. Climate change is causing these fires to be more intense, more destructive.  The winter fire season is beginning to merge with the summer fire season. 

Here in Ventura County we know that it is only a matter of time before a wildfire will threaten one or more of our towns.  Most city’s boundaries sit in "wildland-urban-interfaces" areas. These are zones where communities and urban sprawl are directly adjacent to wildland areas that are at increased risk of wildfires.  While we know the dry, chaparral areas around our towns will eventually be engulfed in flames, we were not prepared to see the flames of the largest wildfire in California history, the “Thomas” fire, from our living rooms.

Remembering Michael Harrington- Democratic Socialist

Maurice Isserman, 

In a lifetime of political engagement, Michael Harrington must have given ten thousand speeches, and of those, probably a thousand in New York City, where he had made his home since his arrival in 1949, age 21. He gave his final speech in the city 40 years later, in May 1989. Suffering from the cancer of the esophagus that would end his life in less than three months, he spoke that day to reporters and editors from the city’s union press. 

Dinah Leventhal, a 22-year-old activist, was in attendance. She was about to take on the job of youth organizer for Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the socialist group that Harrington helped found and led, and welcomed the chance to speak with him for a few minutes afterward. Mike reminisced about his own days as a young socialist organizer in the 1950s. “He said,” she recalled, that “he had felt an incredible degree of freedom and learned so much in those years”

He said I should make the most of it, being an organizer and traveling around, getting to see the country and getting to know what the country was all about.  He really loved this country, and thought that you had to love the country to be a radical, to be a socialist, and to want to change it.

Over the years, Mike met and worked with many important and famous people, including Dr. Martin Luther King, United Auto Worker president Walter Reuther, Ms. Magazine founder Gloria Steinem, U.S. senator and presidential candidate Robert Kennedy, and Prime Minister Olof Palme, leader of Sweden’s ruling Socialist Party, to name but a few. The publication in 1962 of his landmark study of poverty, The Other America, helped spark the Johnson administration’s War on Poverty. He had another best-seller in 1972 with the unlikely title of Socialism, which sold over 100,000 copies in paperback and influenced many readers with its argument that the “real Karl Marx” was a radical democrat, not a would-be dictator. His last book, Socialism: Past and Future, came out shortly before his death. He was an editor of Dissent, a commentator on National Public Radio, a frequent contributor to leading opinion magazines like the Nation and the New Republic. As a public intellectual and a moral tribune, in the 1970s and 1980s, he had few equals on the left, or indeed across the political spectrum. Harrington, Senator Ted Kennedy would write, “has made more Americans more uncomfortable for more good reasons than any other person I know.”

Why Are There Now Millions of Socialists in the U.S.?

Harold Meyerson,

In 1906 German sociologist Werner Sombart wrote an essay entitled Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? that sought to explain why the US, alone among industrialized democracies, had not developed a major socialist movement.

Today, however, we need to pose a different question: why are there socialists in the United States? In this nation that has long been resistant to socialism’s call, who are all these people who now suddenly deem themselves socialists? Where did they come from? What do they mean by socialism?

Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign has made clear that many Democrats are inclined to vote for a candidate who proclaims himself a democratic socialist, but even more dramatic and consequential are the many Democrats who say they’re socialists themselves. In a poll on the eve of the Iowa caucuses, more than 40% of likely Democratic caucus attendees said they were socialists. In a Boston Globe poll on the eve of the New Hampshire primary, 31% of New Hampshire Democratic voters called themselves socialists; among voters under 35, just over half did. And in late February, a Bloomberg poll of likely voters in the Democratic primary in South Carolina – South Carolina! – showed that 39% described themselves as socialists.

Democratic Socialism in the Media

Socialism, democratic socialism, totalitarian communism, social democracy . . . these terms are being thrown around a lot right now. People are asking what they really mean.

Can you help me sustain interest in this topic? How do we keep people talking about democratic socialism at their dinner tables and in break rooms in a way that is not immediately and inherently negative?

I was on C-Span’s “Washington Journal” this week taking calls from around the country about democratic socialism. Here’s a short example of what we discussed:

Caller: “It comes down to the philosophical basis of your theory. Socialism requires that you take from some and give to the others. What is your philosophical basis for being able to do that?”

My response: “I would just say that that’s what’s happening right now under capitalism, from the bank bailouts to Walmart. Anybody that works really hard for a boss who pays them very little and takes a lot of money in, knows that that’s taking from some to give to others.”

One reason Bernie appeals to so many people is his ability to speak about democratic socialism in a language people understand. I tried to do the same.

The clip is almost a full hour, but I encourage you to watch it and also share it with your friends! Post on Facebook, tweet from Twitter, email or even just gather family around your computer.

Click here to watch the video.

John Nichols tells DSA socialism is coming to America

Bill Maher: New Rules - Socialism

Poll Results: Tea party

A Feb.4, 2010 poll by CNN says,

33% of the U.S. supports the Tea Party.

A Feb. 4, 2010  poll by Gallop say,

36% in the U.S.  have a positive view of socialism.

Now, which one of these- Tea Party or Socialism gets access to mainstream media.?

Are we all socialists now?

Business Week
News Analysis May 22, 2009, 3:20PM

Socialism? Hardly, Say Socialists
Under Obama, socialism chatter has permeated the media in 2009. But beyond
sound bites, what is socialism?

By Moira Herbst

The first months of the Obama Administration have given rise to abundant
talk about a U.S. drift into socialism. "We Are All Socialists Now," a
Newsweek cover declared in February. On May 20 the Republican National
Committee approved a resolution calling on Democrats to "stop pushing our
country toward socialism." The resolution was predicated on the idea that,
under Obama, Democrats are following the path of Western European
countries in advocating expansive social safety nets and deeper government
involvement in the economy.

Some conservative commentators have even likened Obama's economic stimulus
and regulatory initiatives to a Soviet-style takeover of the country. In
February, syndicated radio host Rush Limbaugh accused Obama of waging war
on capitalism. "That's his objective. He wants to destroy capitalism,"
Limbaugh told a caller. "He wants to establish a very powerful socialist
government, authoritarian. He wants control of the economy."

But real Socialists would vigorously disagree. They say if the Obama
Administration were establishing a true socialist state, we'd have at
least a $15-an-hour minimum wage (instead of the current $6.55 federal
minimum) and 30-hour workweeks. Every American would be guaranteed
employment and health-care coverage. Oh, and homeless people would be
occupying vacant office buildings in cities and vacant McMansions in the
suburbs.

In fact, many Americans appear to be confused about what socialism
actually is. In a poll of 1,000 adults conducted Apr. 6-7, Rasmussen
Reports found that 53% of Americans said they prefer capitalism to
socialism, while 20% said they prefer socialism. More than one-quarter,
27%, said they're not sure which system is better. Another poll conducted
this month by ConservativeHQ.com found that 70% of self-identified
conservatives consider Obama's political philosophy "Socialist" or
"Marxist," with 11% calling it "Communist."

Socialists say the policies Obama has pursued are hallmarks of "democratic
capitalist" states, not socialist ones. "None of the societies of Western
Europe are socialist, but the political influence of their strong Labor,
Social Democratic, and Socialist parties make their form of capitalism
much more humane than our own," says Frank Llewellyn, national director of
the New York-based Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), the largest
U.S. Socialist party.

Obama: Saving Capitalism from Itself?

As with every political ideology, there's no discrete, tidy explanation of
what socialism means. "There have been diverse socialist movements that
have pursued different programs," says Frances Fox Piven, a professor of
political science at City University of New York (CUNY) and an honorary
chair of the DSA. "What they have shared is an effort to overcome the
historical problem with democracies that separate political governance
from the economy, often with a rigid wall. Socialists have tried to breach
that wall in the interest of democracy, or expanding the idea that the
people shall rule."

Karl Marx called socialism the "revolutionary dictatorship of the
proletariat," the working class seizing power and replacing a political,
economic, and social system controlled by the bourgeoisie, or the
propertied class. Such a reordering denotes "an association where the
development of each is the basis of the free development of all," Marx
wrote in 1848 in The Communist Manifesto.

Socialists say that far from creating a state in which workers rule, the
Obama team is instead scrambling to rescue and preserve capitalism. Sherry
Wolf, an activist with the Chicago-based U.S. branch of the International
Socialist Organization (ISO), scoffs at the idea that the U.S. is at the
dawn of a socialist era. "What Marxists mean by socialism is different
from what Rush Limbaugh means," she says. "We believe the class that
produces the wealth should own and control that wealth. That's a far cry
from what's happening now. The state is propping up banks, mortgage, and
insurance companies, while the lives of working people are torn apart by
foreclosures, evictions, and unemployment. It's an effort to save global
capitalism from its own excesses."

Wolf's group sees itself as "revolutionary," meaning it advocates not
incremental changes but rather a "total transformation of society and
political economy." By definition then, actions by a U.S. President like
Obama—tighter regulations, tax law revisions, and additional emergency
unemployment assistance—are not paving a path toward socialism. "Whoever
runs U.S. Inc. is in no position to advocate for the interests of the
class of people who produce the wealth," Wolf says. "There is really no
way for the President to deliver socialism to the people; it has to be
fought [for] and won by the workers themselves."

"A Hedge Fund Democrat"

Another group, called the Socialist Party USA, based in New York, refuses
to endorse any Democrat or Republican politician. The party, founded in
1973 when the Socialist Party of America split, wants a wholesale
reorientation of the economy so that the focus is on production "for need,
not profit." Billy Wharton, editor of the Socialist magazine for the
1,500-member party, wrote in a March Washington Post column that his group
considers Obama "a hedge-fund Democrat—one of a generation of neo-liberal
politicians firmly committed to free-market policies." "You see [Obama]
operating as a hedge fund Democrat on health care now," Wharton says. "He
blocked advocates of a single-payer system from presenting their case to
the Senate Finance Committee."

Not all Socialists denounce mainstream parties wholesale. Unlike the ISO
and the Socialist Party USA, the DSA, with about 7,000 members, is willing
to work within existing social and political structures toward incremental
change. The DSA is critical of Democrats, calling them the "second most
capitalistic party." Says Llewellyn, the DSA's national director: "We have
a long-term view of protecting people from the devastating power that
capitalism is capable of inflicting. We think the role of government and
civil society is to curtail and eventually eliminate the power of
capitalism to inflict that destruction." At the same time, Llewellyn says,
"we recognize that capitalism is capable of producing tremendous growth,"
which the DSA doesn't oppose.

But even to the more inclusive DSA, Obama is no socialist. "The discussion
of socialism that has appeared in the media is surreal," says Llewellyn.
"Nobody in their right mind would think Obama is a socialist if they knew
anything about the meaning of the word. Obama is acting as Roosevelt did,
trying to save capitalism from itself."

If the U.S. is not operating under a socialist regime, what would it look
like if it were? The DSA's Llewellyn says that for one, health care would
be universal and guaranteed, unlike the less comprehensive, market-based
plans the Obama Administration is floating. The Socialist Party USA takes
its platform a step further, calling for a full employment policy with a
$15 minimum wage, 30-hour workweeks, and six weeks' annual paid vacation
for all workers. The ISO would immediately end foreclosures and allow
homeless people to occupy vacant homes and buildings.

Recovering from Lax Regulation

On Mar. 6 a New York Times reporter asked Obama whether his domestic
policies indicated the President is a socialist. Obama laughed, replying
"the answer would be no." In a later telephone call to the paper, Obama
said enormous taxpayer sums had been injected into the financial system
before his election. "The fact that we've had to take these extraordinary
measures and intervene is not an indication of my ideological preference,
but an indication of the degree to which lax regulation and extravagant
risk-taking has precipitated a crisis," Obama told the newspaper.

Even if the description of "socialist" isn't accurate for the current
state of U.S. affairs, look for the term to reemerge in coming months as
the battle over health-care reform quickens. Earlier this month, for
example, U.S. Representative Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) said Democrats are
on a "march toward socialized medicine." Meanwhile, Socialists consider
Obama a stalwart capitalist. Says Wolf at the ISO: "We haven't seen
Comrade Obama at a meeting."

Herbst is a reporter for BusinessWeek in New York.
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/content/may2009/db20090522_329825.htm

Socialism: lets use the terms correctly

Socialism Without a Soul
Posted on Mar 10, 2009

By Robert Scheer

Newt Gingrich is right: “It is European socialism transplanted to Washington.” How else to describe an economy in which the government controls the entire financial center and is now supplying life support for the auto industry? That’s on top of the existing socialist economy run by the military-industrial complex, which, thanks to George W. Bush, now absorbs upward of 60 percent of the non-entitlement federal budget.

Although we still have a way to go to catch up with the good parts of the European system, including universal health care, high-quality public education and decent working conditions, we do have a system that is now as socialist in budget size as Europe’s. That part I get when I listen to the right-wingers on Fox News bemoaning the reversal of the Reagan Revolution. But what I don’t understand is how in the world they can blame this startling turn of events on Barack Obama.

The vast majority of money allocated so far on President Obama’s watch is an extension of Bush’s banking bailout, which has committed trillions to failed Wall Street conglomerates. I certainly don’t want to defend the bailout and personally think the banks and stockbrokers deserve to go belly up, but what does that mess have to do with Obama, who was in college when the Reagan Revolution launched the deregulation that allowed Wall Street to run wild?

Didn’t Obama inherit the current financial meltdown less than two months ago from the Republicans, who for eight years under Bush assured us that the markets were not in any need of tighter regulation? Wasn’t it GOP congressional members led by folks like Gingrich who pushed though the deregulation legislation that enabled the growth of “too big to fail” financial institutions that now have to be saved by the taxpayers?

Nor has Obama demanded anything more in the way of accountability from those Wall Street swindlers than had the Bush administration. Under both presidents a total of $170 billion was given to insurance giant AIG, and, as The Wall Street Journal reported, at least $50 billion of that money was passed on to top foreign and domestic banks without any public accounting. Indeed, the second in command at the Fed told a Senate committee last week that he wouldn’t reveal the names of the banks that grabbed our money.

Nor has there been any serious demand put on the banks to use the hundreds of billions in federal funds they received to increase liquidity. Indeed, the banks are raising interest rates and cutting limits on credit cards at a time when the government is hoping consumers will use those cards to pump some life into the retail market. As bank industry analyst Meredith Whitney wrote in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed article, consumer credit card lines “were reduced by nearly $500 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008 alone.” She estimates that credit card limits for consumers will be halved over the next year, mostly on consumers who have not done anything wrong. This will take “credit away from people who have the ability to pay their bills,” she notes.

So what we have here is socialism without even the pretense of a soul. Certainly that has been the case with the abject refusal of the banks that received government bailouts to be more aggressive in preventing home foreclosures. And the Obama administration has made it clear that it has no intention of taking over the operation of any of the mega-companies that are in trouble, even when, as in the case of AIG, the government already owns 80 percent of the shares. The reason? Because that would be viewed as nationalization.

So what exactly would Obama’s critics do differently? Nothing on the bailout side. Instead, they have settled for carping criticism of the stimulus package, playing games by nitpicking lesser-cost programs while ignoring the big items that most governors, be they Republican or Democrat, eagerly want. The great fear of the GOP seems to be that some of the stimulus program might actually prove helpful to struggling Americans, but the Republicans can’t just come out of the closet and say so.

What they have picked up on instead is that Obama’s tax cuts provide some redistribution of income to favor the rapidly disappearing middle class at the expense of the super-wealthy, who have profited wildly from Bush tax cuts. Which brings us back to Gingrich’s complaint that Obama is importing European socialism. If that means a system of governance in which a robust middle class is rewarded for work with a strong social safety net supported by higher taxes on the most affluent, well, let’s get it on.

A Progressive Journal of News and Opinion. Editor, Robert Scheer. Publisher, Zuade Kaufman.

Bill Moyers on Socialism: http://www-tc.pbs.org/moyers/rss/media/249essay.m4v