"Swing Voters Draw The Line At Socialists": New Polling Suggests Key Voters Are Skeptical On Bernie

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34. Let's not be naive. The word socialism is toxic to quite a few million voters.

Seems there is history you're not aware of.

Two generations (maybe a generation and a half—boomers and many GenXers) where schooled to fear commies/reds/the USSR, Red China, the domino theory, failed communist collectives, socialists, etc. Many still believe that and they make up quite a large swathe of voters.

I know many who are younger (the 18-35-year-olds you speak of) say that the stigma against socialism has lessened considerably but that may just be among their cohort. There are still millions, millions of voters who detest socialism and that large swathe of voters is not going to vote for Sanders if he gets the nomination—and among those voters, you can bet, are many Democrats, not to mention independents and never-trump republicans, all of whom we need to defeat trump in November.

Do we really want to take the chance that younger voters, who just don't vote as heavily as older ones, will make up for the millions who detest socialism and things imagined about it in their minds?

That's not a good bet. Let's make the election a referendum on trump's criminality, not one on socialism and Sanders.