Get used to it. That pesky word 'socialist' is here to stay
We’ve been trained and conditioned to fear the word ‘socialist.’ The same is true of ‘liberal.’ Yet I have always made a strong point that I am not just a liberal, but a Liberal with a capital L. I did not yet know that I was also a progressive and that I would strongly identify with the Democratic Socialists. Which I do.
Bernie Sanders started it for me. My wife and I both felt “the Bern” back in 2015 when he was running for President. It’s really never stopped for us.
And now, the Democrats are facing a deluge of progressives calling themselves Democratic Socialists and it’s only that last word which is causing all the problems. They stand for the same values that Bernie did back in the day. And still does.
Healthcare for all and making Billionaires pay their fair share in taxes. Back before the billionaire boom, Dwight Eisenhower levied income taxes on the rich which, in some cases, reached 90%. That’s how the interstate system was paid for. Ike was a Republican, who also warned,us about the rise of a “military-industrial complex.”
Bernie was flying solo in 2015 and the Democratic establishment put the fix in, making sure that Hillary Clinton got the nomination. A great many of the general voters back then just wanted change.They wanted something different in politics. They wanted someone new and different. So when the Dems negated Bernie, that same great many turned to the other candidate who espoused change.
And that’s how we got where we are today.
But this time, Bernie has backup. Lots of it. And these new candidates have been winning left and right. The term ‘socialist’ is causing much angst. Yet the voters are showing they don’t give a damn. The one thing that has remained constant is that they want change. And the Democrats who keep losing in the primaries are offering only more of the same.
The current President is trying very hard to mess up our voting process. He’s doing it out of an instinct for self-protection, knowing that, if he can’t muck up the midterms, he WILL be impeached for a third time and that his last two years will go off the rails, curtailing his self -aggrandizement and deep, deep corruption.
Democrats need to stop holding onto the center. Left is where we need to go. And left is where we’re going, despite that troublesome word ‘socialist.’
Van Carter of Sioux Falls is a retired broadcast journalist and environmentalist who published a green website for 15 years
Photo: New York Mayor Mamdani, a member of the Democratic Socialists of America with Pres. Trump, public domain, wikimedia commons
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