Trump may be concerned about running at "socialism"

[dann]

Problem is people have different ideas when the word "Socialism" is used.
The word had suffered bad damage from countires like the Soviet Union and Mao's CHina calling themselves "Socialist".Maybe some rebranding should be done.....

And don't forget the false Marx quotations about socialism and violence that some people are so fond of ...

 

[Lambchops]

Interesting how whenever socialism is brought up, it's always China this and the USSR that.

And no one ever mentions Burkina Faso and Thomas Sankara.

 

[dann]

I never heard of him till now. Here's another one: Amílcar Cabral^WP.

 

[Trebuchet]

Problem is people have different ideas when the word "Socialism" is used.
The word had suffered bad damage from countires like the Soviet Union and Mao's CHina calling themselves "Socialist".
Maybe some rebranding should be done.....

And "National Socialism". (Godwin acknowledged.)

 

[portlandatheist]

Problem is people have different ideas when the word "Socialism" is used.
The word had suffered bad damage from countires like the Soviet Union and Mao's CHina calling themselves "Socialist".
Maybe some rebranding should be done.....

Not only different ideas, but the word is used intentionally disingenuously in my opinion, by both the right and the left. Social spending and other social programs and safety nets are not socialism, especially if their funding comes from the taxation of a thriving private sector capitalist economy. When I think of socialism, I think of it as the abolition of the private sector economy completely. I think just about everybody(liberal or conservative) recognizes that we need a mixed economy with both private and public sectors and it is a very radical notion to believe that we should have a purely private sector or purely public sector economy. We may disagree on the details and extent of those sectors but nearly everyone is on the same page in terms of having a mixed economy. Even self described "socialists" like Bernie believe in having a mixed economy.

 

[blutoski]

This is relevant to the current side conversation:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mattberman/elizabeth-warren-joe-biden-poll


I'd guess most of us US left wingers are "pro-democratic-socialism" to whatever extent it's an accurate term to describe how we think the politics of Scandinavia are admirable and a short term ideal to strive towards, but we think focusing on the US legacy of the New Deal and how arguably "socialist" programs (like social security, national forests, etc) can exist within a larger capitalist economy is ultimately more useful framework to explain the policies we advocate.

Man, I remember the End Of History days, when we thought politics would evolve into Market Socialism versus Welfare Capitalism.

Fukuyama completely ignored history. When the unifying enemy is gone (Carthage, USSR, whatever), a republic turns on itself with parties being nothing more than 'brands' - like soccer teams - that the public supports or reviles with zero attention to policies. This is how the Republicans went from 'rejecting free trade is treason' to 'free trade is treason' in less than a year, or 'states rights are sacred' to 'California emissions laws must be overruled by Washington' simultaneously. There's no *actual* policy there. Medicare is socialism. Trump vowed to protect it in his campaign.

Yuval Levin [put it this way]:

Partisanship has displaced ambition to legislate. Senators and representatives now “see themselves as players in a larger political ecosystem the point of which is not legislating or governing but rather engaging in a kind of performative outrage for a partisan audience.”