So we keep hearing that Bernie Sanders is just too radical to get elected by the American people. Many in the media, particularly from the right, are constantly feeding this idea. Even the Clinton campaign, as well as Hillary herself, want to keep reminding us that this is so. I have my ideas, but instead lets get a couple other opinions, including a commonly perceived radical. After all who could possibly better identify another radical?
The article linked below in salon.com, by Sean Illing briefly examines this idea of “radical Bernie Sanders”. Illing quotes Noam Chomsky (assumed here as our consensus radical) from a recent interview where he says Sanders is “considered radical and extremist, which is a pretty interesting characterization, because he’s basically a mainstream New Deal Democrat. His positions would not have surprised President Eisenhower, who said, in fact, that anyone who does not accept New Deal programs doesn’t belong in the American political system. That’s now considered very radical.” Note that Sanders, himself, has not dodged the “socialism” label, dealing with it directly in various speeches. The problem is the media and the neoliberal establishment in the Democratic Party don’t want to hear it, so it gets very little fair coverage. As Illing says “Lost in the discussions about Bernie Sanders’s “socialism” is an obvious and important fact: What he’s actually proposing is not only not radical – it’s mainstream.” Sanders insists his philosophy is “grounded … in the tradition of FDR”. He points out that “almost everything he [FDR] proposed was called ‘socialist’,” and lists examples such as Social Security, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance and others. I guess that damn radical, socialist FDR was the problem. Of course what those on the right would say here is “YES” he was.
Like so many of our political problems today, this comes down to having a little historical knowledge as well as the ability to find traverse the maze of propaganda and misinformation. Illing adds “all Sanders has done is challenge the gospel of neoliberalism, which has systematically gutted our country’s public institutions. America’s economy has been steadily deregulated since the 1980s, when President Reagan first surrendered to the privatization scheme of neoliberalism.” As sources of power continue to suggest Sanders is a “radical” and a “socialist” his label subtly morphs into a “communist”. Obviously, once this happens there is little chance of recovery. And as more and more Americans subconsciously accept these relabeling actions, our ability to maintain remnants of the New Deal, much less correct our massive inequalities, becomes improbable.
Read the article and reevaluate your thoughts regarding socialism and its place in a democracy.