Sticking with the socialism theme, here’s a juicy tidbit from the huge Glenn Thrush/Annie Karni piece on the Clinton campaign’s handling of the email controversy:
[Hillary] Clinton appreciated Sanders’ respectful campaigning style, but she was slow to view him as a serious threat. During one of her summer swings through the Midwest, she answered one supporter’s question about Sanders with her signature chuckle, saying, “Come on. … The man is a socialist!” At a fundraiser in the South around the same time, an attendee told us, Clinton told the group that all the major Democrats “agreed” on most basic policy issues except for one, “who doesn’t even believe in capitalism.”
Of course, Bernie confirmed his anti-capitalist credentials on Meet the Press. Obviously, most people think this is a curious strategy, including the folks at First Read who are handicapping tonight’s debate:
Bernie Sanders: He simply has to come across as electable. Sure, he’s faring well in many general-election polls right now. But make no mistake: His comment on “Meet the Press” Sunday that he’s not a capitalist isn’t a winning general-election message, especially when being a socialist running for president is more unpopular than being a Muslim or an atheist. Another question we have: How does Sanders hold up over two hours of debate? One way to judge tonight’s debate is to gauge who does a better job shoring up his/her weakness — Clinton’s not-always progressive views vs. Sanders’ electability doubts.
So, either socialism gets redefined in the public’s mind pretty quickly or Hillary’s right and you can swat Sanders away like a bug simply by invoking the deadly “socialism” word.
What do you think?
I don’t have problem with the message here, but I do doubt the messenger.
Why do I get the feeling that this time in 2007 Madame Clinton was either thinking or saying that Barack Obama can’t win due to his skin color.
If anyone I respect as a shrewd politician (which I don’t for Clinton) came out with exactly the same point, I’d have no problem accepting it. What does Obama, Axelrod or Plouffe think?
The word is Bernie’s biggest weakness IMO and he’ll have to come up with a way to make this enthusiasm of his palatable to the American boob, who has been so programmed against any word that does not embrace their beloved “capitalism” that they will salivate like Pavlov’s dogs.
Of course, most people’s working definitions of any of the great words describing humanity’s economic systems of the 20th century are pretty damn sketchy. As many will point out, the actual policies of Bernie’s “socialism” poll pretty well, even if the word has been made to smell worse than dog shit to the American nose. So he’ll have to do something about the label that he will obviously have fire-hosed at him by the Noise Machine.
He could say his socialism is well regulated capitalism, and that an unregulated capitalist economy produces things like the Great Recession, not to mention the Great Depression. That the New Deal was assailed by our permanently Reactionary Right as Socialism!! for decades, and WAS a form of American socialism.
The “socialist” countries of the world by and large are overwhelmingly “capitalist” in their operation. Hell, “communist” China is effectively crony capitalist! The socialists just regulate the beast to varying degrees, and have taken a few critical items out of its nauseating For-Profit claws, such as health care. Regulating utilities is “socialist”, for Christ’s sake. It shouldn’t be that hard to explain. The question is how much will the corporate media distort the concept, whatever Bernie may have to say about it?
I do think Bernie needs to define it.
It is worth noting that in the two speeches I have seen him give he used progressive but not socialist to describe himself.
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Then it’s not socialism. It’s ‘socialism’, like New Labour — Labour without Clause 4.
A straight-up Democrat at least isn’t flying under false colors. And ‘well-regulated capitalism’ is what the Democratic party has stood for — on those occasions when it’s stood for something — for generations.
We totally have! If we’ve stood for anything in the past 30 years, it’s well-regulated capitalism. That’s what these purity trolls don’t understand. Sure, the party isn’t perfect, in some ways, but you’d have to be a Unicornhumper to expect better. This is the best of all possible political parties, and this administration in particular has functioned at 100% of Realistic Progressive Capacity for years. Silly hippies.
So, either socialism gets redefined in the public’s mind pretty quickly or Hillary’s right and you can swat Sanders away like a bug simply by invoking the deadly “socialism” word.
It’s not a dirty word anymore. We can thank Rupert Murdoch and his minions for that. Also, look at the polls from 2007. Hillary is far from in the clear yet. How much has Bernie campaigned in South Carolina yet? I suspect he’ll have more events there lined up in the future.
Next you’ll tell me that atheism isn’t a dirty word anymore.
It is a dirty word, but it’s extremely polarized by age: http://www.people-press.org/2010/05/04/socialism-not-so-negative-capitalism-not-so-positive/ and by race http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/28/little-change-in-publics-response-to-capitalism-socialism/.
Given current Democratic primary demographics (which is younger and has more racial minorities), it’s an obstacle — but not an insurmountable one. General election is more fuzzy, but 2008 and 2012 Obama was able to get his entire victory margin by voters under 45. So it’s an open question.
There is some evidence to support this. I wouldn’t go so far as to say that it isn’t a dirty word anymore, but it is growing less dirty.
And the reasons aren’t hard to guess. For younger Americans, “socialism” isn’t whatever the Soviet Union is doing, it’s what the right keeps insisting that President Obama is doing.
Although personally I find the words “socialism” and “capitalism” both pretty much useless anymore, as they’ve basically been drained of meaning by overuse. Certainly “socialist” is just an epithet to the Right, not a meaningful description of anything. But at the same time it really doesn’t mean a whole lot when Bernie Sanders says he’s not a capitalist. I’m not aware that he’s proposing to abolish stock exchanges or anything like that. He’s just saying that he rejects a certain attitude, which I do too, but no in the same words.
To me a much better strategy is to draw on the very rich American tradition of attitudes and policies that might be called socialist, if you want to, but don’t have to be. This isn’t Karl Marx, after all:
Non sequitur.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_League_of_Religious_Socialists
Look, Bernie’s been calling himself a socialist his whole political career, and he keeps winning elections. Why stop now?
He does define it. He makes sure people understand that he’s a DEMOCRATIC socialist. You knoq, like they have in Scandinavia.
Socialism, as a concept is alright.
It’s clearly better than capitalism, and more realistic than communism, but it shouldn’t be more than just a brief stop along the economic progress trail.
That ‘Merricans are afraid of the word and probably couldn’t describe it without substantial help from the internet shows just how naive the average American is.
What is hilarious is that Bernie Sanders is socialist the same way Hillary Clinton is a liberal: only by American standards of the concept.
Sanders, if placed in any other civilized, western political group would be a solid liberal, at best.
I don’t know what to think anymore. The other day my 50+ year old neighbor who hoards guns and tends to think the John Birch society was a bunch of pikers was openly and seriously questioning some of the basic tenets of capitalism. In vino veritas, maybe, but something I would have never expected from him.
I can’t see him ever voting for a Democratic candidate regardless, but things are shifting.
That’s the sort of anecdotal data that I pay attention to.
Summer 2007 I observed an upper middle-class white man that wouldn’t vote for other than a Republican respond to a short new clip of Obama and responded with, “He’s interesting.” I tucked that away as a GE data point. Beating Clinton in the money chase as of 9/30 was a more important data point for the primary. With Obama’s caucus win in Iowa, I called the nomination and general election for him. Had Clinton won in Iowa, I would probably have called the nomination for her as well at that point. But not the GE.
Obama’s a socialist, too, isn’t he? And Muslim, too. Name-calling is maybe feeling just a tad tired.
I don’t know. It’s probably a huge problem–and I say that as someone with a Bernie bumpersticker–but the only way it’ll stop being a problem to openly admit that capitalism isn’t Jesus is for people like Sanders to ‘come out.’
I can’t believe he’s going to win the Democratic primary, though obviously he’s a much stronger general election candidate (using the same ‘electability’ argument one hears everywhere). So might as well try to slip some honesty into the cultural discourse.
And how many of the candidates are capitalists? They’re oligarchs. But of course the truth is disqualifying.
Team Sanders cannot let the socialism label dangle out there. They must grab it and run with it. Something like the old Burma Shave highway signs:
“You could be a socialist if”
“You support public roads; that’s socialism.”
“You support public schools”
“You support X” (the list is very long).
Alas, I think it’s hopeless. No more than 10% of the people have any idea what the word even means, and it’s a dirty word. There’s no way to change that in 1 year.
I taught sociology at a community college when I was in grad school. Some of my students insisted that the Boston Globe was a communist newspaper. Really.
And yet Alabama, of all states, put a socialist on their state quarter. Go figure.
I’m more optimistic than you. Given five minutes with a classroom of young adults, predominately AA and Latino (average intelligence and not all that well educated), that supported corporeal punishment for children by 80% and the other 20% were undecided, that shifted to near 80% opposing, 10% undecided, and only 10% that stuck with the “it’s good for children” position. Those that wanted to speak were allowed to participate, so that probably added another five minutes to the whole discussion.
Did that change in opinion change their behavior? Probably some but when something is so well ingrained, it takes time and repetition to reinforce the new understanding and have it translate into different behaviors.
Well fine, if I could get 100 million voters into my classroom . . .
It’s the undivided attention for five minutes that’s the problem, not the 100 million.
But one theme, chunked into 15 to 30 second ads and repeated over and over again in the right markets could be more effective than you think.
Hey it worked for light beer. And people do think Velveeta is cheese….
Bunker Hill? My Townie relatives started boycotting the Globe during busing 40 years ago and never went back….
I started a comment on this post.
Here’s the gist of it:
It grew.
Now a standalone post:
The “dirty” word is now “CAPITALISM.” Bet on it.
Comment there if you so desire.
Later…
AG
Rand Paul: I Hope Pope Isn’t Overly Critical Of U.S. And Capitalism During Visit
“…compared to other countries our economic system does work better than any economic system has ever worked in the history of man.”
http://www.buzzfeed.com/andrewkaczynski/rand-paul-i-hope-pope-isnt-overly-critical-of-us-and-capital
#.ryZNGW94w
As someone who helped run the campaign that got an open socialist elected to Seattle’s city council – and is about to get her re-elected, probably comfortably, despite the unanimous hostility of local legacy media and the political establishment – Clinton needs to get a clue. The arc here has moved from the establishment laughing Kshama Sawant off to being terrified of her, and (probably fruitlessly) pouring enormous resources into defeating her.
Why? Because nobody under age 35 remembers the Cold War from personal experience. “Socialism” just isn’t a meaningful slur to them. What is meaningful is that their economic prospects are far worse than their parents’ ever were, and that the planet is roasting at a pace they’ll live to see cataclysmic results from. What matters is a politician that, uniquely, talks about issues meaningful to their own lives, and talks about them in a way that matches their personal experience that the system is rigged.
And sure enough, that’s where a lot of Sanders’ non-traditional support comes from. I’m not a huge Sanders fan, but Clinton’s dismissiveness only confirms, to me and to many others, that she lives in a different world than the one I inhabit.
She’s a pol, and a major one — just about ensuring she does in fact live in a different world. Hard to escape that bubble.
She may be a little slow noticing the arc, but so are plenty of non-pol pundits and Dem activists who remain a bit nervous about Bernie’s Big S problem. And we’re not talking about local city council stuff here, let alone in the Seattle area. Or just a tiny state like Vermont, home of Ben & Jerry’s.
Believe me, I’m well aware that Seattle is a political and cultural bubble. As is Vermont. But even where the percentages differ, the demographic trends don’t. I had to be convinced of it over the past four or so years myself, but I’ve just seen too much evidence, both anecdotally and in polling and focus groups, in and out of my home city’s bubble: among millenials and younger, even in more conservative areas (as with GLBT issues and other generational divides), “socialist!” just isn’t the epithet it used to be. And as demonstrated in tonight’s debate, Sanders’ anger and passion is going to reach a lot of people who never dreamed they’d vote for someone with such a label. I still doubt Sanders can get the nomination, but he’s no Kucinich, either.
“Clinton needs to get a clue.”
It’s getting old, isn’t it? She didn’t take Obama seriously until it was too late and then repeated the mistake with Sanders.
There is a real tone-deafness here that is concerning for a professional politician.
Unless I’m wrong, capitalism is an economic theory. Something along the lines of people are motivated by profit and free markets work most efficiently to create the greatest profits.
Socialism is a political ideology that proposes that on moral and practical grounds it creates the most sustainable and just outcomes for people of a nation.
Ideology and economic theory are related but not the same thing. One regards the social contract people make in order to form lAsti g laws and governments. The other is science to try to explain and predict the facts on the ground.
Actually you are wrong. Capitalism is not a theory but an idea turned into a reality. That reality is the structure of corporations created by us, a legal agreement enforced by military force, with only one goal; to make a profit for the shareholders of corporations whoever they are. While this reality has made us the richest country in the world it has no social conscience, no constraints or any pretense of morality. There is no science here, only Greed is good. Now that we are on the edge with Obama and Hillary’s leadership to conquer the entire world of behalf of the corporations we are certain we are right. Capitalism in its worst form is now our very own political ideology. This is why Bernie says he’s not a Capitalist