Bernie Sanders' 'socialism' may have mainstream appeal [View all]

[Jefferson23]

May 12. 2015



Finally, conservatives have a real socialist to go crazy about. Instead of concocting dark fairytales about how Barack Obama, a very conventional liberal Democrat, is a secret Marxist who wants to destroy the American way of life, they can shriek about Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who has never shied away from the socialist label.


Mr. Sanders is now the first person to challenge Hillary Clinton in the race to win the 2016 Democratic Party presidential nomination. Ms. Clinton, though, is not his real adversary, Mr. Sanders says. He refuses to make disparaging comments about Ms. Clinton and insists he has never run an attack ad in any campaign and will not do so against her. Mr. Sanders wants to take on the billionaires, not Hillary.


Nobody gives the 73-year-old Mr. Sanders a chance of stopping the Clinton political juggernaut, but some think he could make it veer to the left. If the Vermonter gets traction in debates and primaries with his unabashed progressive positions, Ms. Clinton might be forced to match at least some of his rhetoric. Would that be a bad thing for Democrats? Not if enough beleaguered middle class voters get a chance to consider what Mr. Sanders' version of "socialism" entails and like what they see.

Let's consider some of Mr. Sanders' wild ideas:

--Free college tuition. That is something that students can count on in many European countries and once was not uncommon in the United States. In what many consider the most golden era of the Golden State, California's great public university system was tuition-free. In many other states, students paid only a few hundred dollars per year to go to top state colleges. Now, of course, American students are graduating with crushing student loan debts while many others cannot afford to pay in the first place. Sanders' idea seems radical only in that it makes radically good sense.

in full: http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/opinion/bal-bernie-sanders-socialism-may-have-mainstream-appeal-20150511-story.html