Tag: socialism
Devin Nunes Says Democratic Party Is ‘Socialist...Like The Old Soviet Union’

Devin Nunes Says Democratic Party Is ‘Socialist...Like The Old Soviet Union’

Reprinted with permission from Alternet

Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) on Tuesday compared the Democratic Party to Soviet Russia and the Chinese Communist Party. His comparisons are wildly false.

Soviet Russia, or the USSR, which existed from the early 1920's to the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, was led for a few years by Vladimir Lenin and then for decades by Joseph Stalin. The dictator Stalin was responsible for the deaths of millions.

"The Democrat Party is a socialist party, set up similar to the Chinese Communist Party, or the old Soviet Union or even Russia today where you have a politburo style system," Nunes said, in his false statement.

It did not go well on Twitter for the California Republican, who is closely tied to Trump.

#EndorseThis: Trump Previews GOP Attack On Sanders

#EndorseThis: Trump Previews GOP Attack On Sanders

As the Democratic primaries get under way, Republicans are unstinting in their praise of Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT). They love his authenticity and cheer whenever he rises in polls. The Trump campaign is reportedly even trying to boost Bernie in early primary states.
But should Sanders actually win the Democratic nomination, that benign and friendly attitude will change radically. In his Super Bowl interview with Fox News personality Sean Hannity, Trump offered a glimpse of how his campaign will treat a Sanders candidacy in the general election.

Why Democrats Are (Finally) Criticizing Bernie Sanders

Why Democrats Are (Finally) Criticizing Bernie Sanders

Bernie Sanders’ campaign recently stabbed Elizabeth Warren in the back. She was the Vermont senator’s comrade in arms. It also threw a pack of lies at Joe Biden, tarring him as corrupt with zero evidence. As former Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin told Politico, Sanders “will play dirty.” The Democrat added, “I’m concerned that we’re seeing a replay of the kind of dynamics that didn’t allow Hillary to win.”

The difference between now and 2016, though, is that Sanders’ targets are finally hitting back. This outbreak of hostilities among Democrats is not hurting the party. On the contrary. An airing of these grievances is long overdue.

And whether one shares Sanders’ political views is irrelevant to this conversation. (I like some of them.)

The danger Sanders poses for the party is that, to him, electing Democrats comes second to building the “movement.” This explains why his sidekick, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, is pushing primary challenges to moderate Democrats who won difficult races in swing districts.

The catchphrase on Sanders’ website, Our Revolution, is “Campaigns end. Revolutions Endure.” Indeed, he and his fellow socialists have latched on to the Democratic Party because having a D after their names is the only way they can win an election.

Few things make the Bernie base madder than the charge that their hero helped sabotage Clinton’s candidacy. Its members passionately note that he politicked for her in the last days of the campaign. That’s true, but by then, not doing so was tantamount to openly supporting Donald Trump.

Early in 2016, when it seemed possible that Sanders might score more votes than Clinton, he assailed the superdelegates who mostly backed Clinton and could have delivered her victory. His supporters demanded that superdelegates reflect the popular vote, “not the party elites.”

By June, when Clinton had racked up a commanding majority of primary votes, Sanders did an about face and urged the superdelegates to ignore the voters and support him. “Superdelegates have a very important decision to make,” he told NBC News.

Upon winning the Republican nomination, Trump announced, “To all of those Bernie Sanders voters who have been left out in the cold by a rigged system of superdelegates, we welcome you with open arms.”

Trump was the official Republican candidate, and Sanders still wouldn’t back the Democratic one. In the weeks leading up to the Democratic National Convention, he withheld his endorsement of Clinton, insisting that certain demands be met. Some of his delegates chanted, “Lock her up!” right on the convention floor.

Sanders (and Trump’s Russian trolls) had brainwashed some liberals and independents into believing that Clinton was horribly corrupt. That helps explain why 20 percent of those who voted for Sanders in the primaries did not vote for Clinton in the general election. Some of his supporters are now spreading the fear that history could repeat itself if a moderate such as Biden becomes the nominee.

Elaine Godfrey wrote in The Atlantic that progressive organizers she has spoken with said they are “worried that, absent a Democratic candidate who excites them, many Americans might not vote at all.”

Trump should excite them enough. People who don’t get that they are voting against as well as for are political neuters. Are they going to help reelect Trump on Tuesday and then rage on Wednesday that he’s burning up the planet?

Yes, mainstream Democrats had to have it out with the heretic hunters of the left. The person most displeased by this counterattack on Sanders surely must be Trump. Sanders is the candidate Trump most wants to run against. And that should tell Democrats something.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

Why Many Democrats Are Happy To See Sanders Fading

Why Many Democrats Are Happy To See Sanders Fading

History will best remember Bernie Sanders for his role in helping elect Donald Trump. Happily for many (if not most) Democrats, Sanders is now fading big time.

The earlier assumption was that the 2020 Democratic race would boil down to a brawl between Sanders and Joe Biden. Now we see Elizabeth Warren edging Sanders out for second place in a few polls. Biden, meanwhile, remains comfortably ahead of both of them.

What did Sanders do wrong in 2016? It wasn’t challenging Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. That was fair. Rather, it was his savaging her long after she had become the obvious victor. By May 3, Trump had become the presumptive Republican nominee, but Sanders withheld his endorsement for Clinton until July 12. The game was political extortion, threatening the Democratic Party and its candidate with chaos at the national convention if his demands weren’t met.

Interesting that some prominent leftists, Bernie people in the past, have recently moved to Warren, the other populist progressive. Katrina vanden Heuvel, publisher of the left-wing Nation magazine, sang Warren’s praises in a Washington Post column that barely acknowledged Sanders’ existence — and even those rare mentions seemed designed to appease the democratic socialist’s avid fandom.

An oddity of the Sanders phenomenon has been his obsessive need to lecture the public on the beauties of socialism. In a recent spiel, Sanders went to great lengths to brand popular Medicare as a socialist-style program.

Is it? Medicare isn’t socialized medicine. It is, however, socialized insurance. But let’s not quibble. We can easily believe that conservatives in those gated retirement communities would grab their pitchforks if their Medicare benefits were menaced. But they might also turn the weapons around to anyone who calls them socialists. Sanders is not going to change their mindset.

Calling Medicare socialism does not help Medicare’s cause. When the health insurance program for the elderly was debated in the early 1960s, Ronald Reagan raged that Medicare would be a “socialized program.” If it wasn’t stopped, he warned, “you and I are going to spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in America when men were free.”

The last thing Medicare’s backers would have said at the time is that Medicare would be great because it’s socialism. The long-running problem with Sanders is that he seems more interested in selling the socialism label than the products that allegedly lie behind it.

Sanders might find solace in a poll showing that almost 3 in 4 Democrats are cool with socialism. But one imagines that more like 11 out of 10 Democrats are not at all OK with re-electing Trump.

And that’s why affections on the left are steering toward Warren. She is a progressive, to be sure. Some of her proposals may be attractive, others less so. But when asked how she feels about capitalism, she says things like, “I am a capitalist to my bones,” and “I believe in markets.” Thus, she’d be far more electable than Sanders.

That Warren used to be a Republican — something some heretic hunters on the left use against her — is an attraction in my book. It suggests an understanding about how independents and moderate Republicans hear political messages.

Warren has her demerits. She can grate with her hectoring and incendiary rhetoric. And that weird dance over her claimed Cherokee heritage made one question her judgment. Why in the world, after Donald Trump challenged the claim, did she release a DNA test that showed it to be almost entirely untrue?

So Biden remains the strongest candidate to smite Trumpism. And a burden will be lifted off Democrats once Sanders again becomes the curiosity from Vermont that he once was.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com.To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.