2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Can Bernie supporters comprehend why someone would prefer Hillary over Bernie? [View all]deutsey
(20,166 posts)People said similar things about electing someone named "Barack Hussein Obama" to the White House in 2008.
With unregulated casino capitalism ravaging our society and the world, I think the time is ripe for a discussion of "Democratic Socialism" (which is what Sanders espouses) as a viable alternative to the crisis Reaganism has wrought. (For more on Democratic Socialism, see: http://www.dsausa.org/).
I think it's long past due to overcome our historical amnesia and recall that socialism was on the rise in America between the Gilded Age and World War I, with socialists elected to state legislatures and even to the US Congress. After WWI (and the Russian Revolution especially, which scared the hell out of capitalists in the US), there was a very repressive Red Scare in America that unleashed a violent reaction against socialism in America.
The Great Depression revived socialism and communism in the US and the threat of a Soviet-style revolution in the US (or a fascist takeover on the other extreme) was so real that FDR was able to convince enough of the wealthy elites to support the New Deal.
WWII, McCarthyism, and later COINTELPRO, the Corporatist reaction of the '70s and '80s, along with authoritarian Communism, has led to the near total demonization of socialist alternatives to unregulated capitalism. With capitalism's growing failure to deliver the goods and services people need, it's time to take the horns and pitchfork from socialism and explore those alternatives again.
Having said all that, I'm not a Hillary supporter, but if she gets the nomination I will vote for her.