By Nicholas Frankovich
Monday, March 09, 2020
Again, Bernie Sanders has run for president of the United
States as he thinks it should be, not as it is. In 2040, we might look back and
say that his greatest contribution to American political culture was, for
better or for worse, to open the Overton window to the word “socialism.” In
2020, the word hurts him more than it helps, but reactions to it split along
generational lines, and time may be on its side. Not enough time, though, in a
mere campaign season or two, to make much difference for Sanders.
Whatever Americans think that socialism is, they
disapprove of it, 59 percent to 39 percent, according to Gallup in October. Two
years ago, 38 percent told Gallup that “we have socialism in the United States
today.” Presumably some of them thought that it was bad while others thought
that it was good and that we should have more of it. Only 17 percent said that
socialism means government ownership of the means of production. A couple of
weeks ago, Gallup released a poll in which 45 percent said they’d be willing to
vote for a socialist.
What Millennials tend to mean by “socialism” — progressive
taxes, social-welfare entitlements — is different from the images that the word
conjures in the minds of older voters who have some memory of the Cold War and
are most of the electorate. Sanders and his supporters shake their heads at
critics who seem to think that an increase in taxpayer-funded health care would
be the first stop on a road to reeducation camps and the gulag. The critics
would be less likely to think that if Sanders and his supporters didn’t call
their policy wish list “socialism.”
Many Democrats, perhaps most, who want to win in November
resent Sanders for, as they see it, using their party’s national campaign as a
platform on which to play a longer game than the schedule permits. He and his
base may like to think they’re the future of the party. Their problem is that
most voters live in the here and now.
The Sanders campaign drags us into semantic arguments. Is
Sanders a socialist? Is he a “democratic socialist”? Is there a difference?
Maybe the more accurate label for him is “social democrat”? What’s a social
democrat? How should we label the Scandinavian countries that he’s wont to cite
as examples of what he has in mind?
An unstated premise of the national seminar that he’s
inspired has been that only a clod would confuse Sanders socialism with Soviet
Communism, never mind his past expressions of admiration for the USSR, which,
the New York Times now reports, “spotted opportunity” in him. In both
his record and his rhetoric he affirms the conflation, of socialism and
authoritarian Communism, that many younger socialists spend so much energy
trying to dispel. He makes an awkward figurehead for their cause.
As if to aggravate the problem, two weeks ago he went on 60
Minutes and defended Fidel Castro. No doubt his comments were more warmly
received in Oberlin than in South Florida. Here’s Andrew Gillum, the leading
light of the left wing of the Florida Democratic Party (he was its
gubernatorial nominee in 2018), in an interview with David Axelrod:
One Colombian-American state
senator, a Democrat, put it this way. She said, “Listening to Sanders talk
about, or romanticize, or give credit to the Castro regime because of a
literacy reading program is like listening to Donald Trump after
Charlottesville say there were good people on both sides.” That’s how deep this
hits in those communities.
Sanders subsequently doubled down on his Castro talk. Who
needs Florida?
Last time, in 2016, he lost it to Clinton in a rout. The
split was two to one. Of Florida’s 67 counties, he carried nine, concentrated
in the northernmost end of the state; three were in the Panhandle. The county
where Clinton beat him hardest was the state’s largest, Miami-Dade, where the
split was three to one — no surprise, given the clash of two hard facts:
Sanders brands himself a socialist, and much of the population in South Florida
either has fled from, or has family who have fled from, Latin American
countries where “socialism” has come to mean gun violence and empty supermarket
shelves.
His apologia for Castro amounts almost to a formal
forfeit of the Florida Democratic primary on March 17. Democratic congresswoman
Stephanie Murphy said that Sanders “has consistently taken positions that are
wrong on the merits and will alienate many Florida voters.” Representative
Donna Shalala, whose district covers much of Miami-Dade, issued this statement:
Senator Sanders’ comments on the
Castro regime are misguided, ill-informed, and unacceptable. Over the last six
decades, hundreds of thousands of Cubans have risked their lives to escape the
tyranny of the Castro regime — a reign of fear, paranoia, and oppression that
regularly abuses human rights in order to stifle free thought and democracy in
Cuba to this very day.
I believe Senator Sanders would
benefit from taking time to meet with the many survivors of Castro’s Cuba who
now live in South Florida. My hope is that after meeting with the exile
community, he will recognize that the Cuban regime — and other similar
authoritarian regimes across Latin America — are instruments of evil and are
not worthy of his praise.
Under the headline “Florida Democrats Stand in Solidarity
with People Fleeing Dictatorships,” the Florida Democratic Party issued a
statement that reads in part:
Florida Democrats condemn dictators
who toppled democracies across the globe and stand in solidarity with the
thousands of people who have fled violent dictatorships in Cuba, Venezuela, and
Nicaragua. Candidates need to understand our immigrant communities’ shared
stories, as well as provide solutions to issues that matter to all Floridians.
Florida would be out of Sanders’s reach in a general
election, too. It’s not the only reason that Democrats nationwide appear ready
to deny him the nomination. It’s not even the main reason. But it’s a
near-perfect illustration of the main reason.
No comments:
Post a Comment