Electing Bernie

CONVENTIONAL WISDOM has it that Bernie Sanders is unelectable. Too far too the left. That socialist thing. Super Tuesday seems to have confirmed that. His base is the millennials, more than half of whom believe that socialism isn't such a bad thing after all. On super Tuesday, they seem to have stayed home, as young folks are inclined to do on election day. This, notwithstanding the fact that Bernie has already gotten millions of votes, from Democrats, running against Democrats. One is motivated to wonder whether he might receive enough support to unseat the incumbent reprobate in chief. To so do, he would have to convince the general electorate of the following: that although he is a self proclaimed "socialist", he is a democratic socialist, of the variety found in those wealthy Scandinavian countries, and throughout Europe, not the kind they have in dictatorial places like Cuba, China, and the like. Furthermore, so is everybody else in these United States; democratic socialists. Problem is, those who attack and express terror at the word "socialism" do no understand what socialism is. socialism is, of course, when goods or e=services such as Social Security, Medicare, highways, streets, and schools are provided by the government, at tax payer expense, rather than by private enterprise for profit. hence, all Americans are, at least i part, socialists. Bernie Sanders needs to make that point, pronto. Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says that Sanders is more of an FDR new Deal liberal than a socialist. Roosevelt, however, was himself a socialist, only he had the political savvy not to say so. socialism has deep roots in America, stemming from the horrible working conditions in America's first factories, in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1920 socialist Eugene V. Debs received a million votes for president, even though he was in jail at the time, for union organizing. In 1932, the year in which Roosevelt sent Herbert hoover packing due to Hoover's refusal to take government action to alleviate the great depression, convinced that the free market would solve everything, socialist and communist candidates received over one million votes. But that was then, this is now. Since he Reagan revolution, American conservatism has reared its ugly head and mover far, far to the right. For proof, consult the Republican party platform from 1956, the Eisenhower era. It sounds like Bernie sanders. Support for Labor, minimum wage, women, minorities, all that. Although we are now firmly ensconced in the dark ages, there remains hope for Bernie Sanders. He has more company than most folks seem to think, and, more is on the way.