What is democratic socialism?
This is how close Bernie got to an answer, according to John Nichols.
“Well,” replied Sanders, “we’re gonna win because first, we’re gonna explain what democratic socialism is.”
And then he didn't, but said this, reducing socialism to progressive bumper stickers.
“[What] democratic socialism is about is saying that it is immoral and wrong that the top one-tenth of 1 percent in this country own almost 90 percent—almost—own almost as much wealth as the bottom 90 percent. That it is wrong, today, in a rigged economy, that 57 percent of all new income is going to the top 1 percent,” continued the senator, who explained “that when you look around the world, you see every other major country providing healthcare to all people as a right, except the United States. You see every other major country saying to moms that, when you have a baby, we’re not gonna separate you from your newborn baby, because we are going to have—we are gonna have medical and family paid leave, like every other country on Earth. Those are some of the principles that I believe in, and I think we should look to countries like Denmark, like Sweden and Norway, and learn from what they have accomplished for their working people.”
For readers who may somehow have forgotten or never known, socialism is public ownership of the means of production, and democratic socialism is socialism in the context of democratic government.
And Bernie's history, like much of his current rhetoric, shows him to be much brighter pink than his current agenda lets on - a point which has always been true of socialists, even those who founded parties of that name, running for office in a capitalist democracy.
Hillary, in no way a socialist and like every other non-socialist Democrat, is in no position to red bait Bernie for fear of sliming her party and herself.
She and they have to shield him as hypocritically as those who know quite well what he really was and is.
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