A recent New York Times headline warned readers that “Republicans Already Are Demonizing Democrats as Socialists and Baby Killers.” The article pivots on President Donald Trump’s strategy of portraying Democratic Party leaders as a gaggle of radicalized socialists.
Now, Republicans have correctly accused Democrats of taking a hard-left turn when supporting legalization of third-trimester abortions for virtually any reason until the moment of birth (and sometimes after). And if you can be demonized for supporting such a position—as almost every Democrat presidential hopeful, all of whom oppose the Pass Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, does—it’s only because you have fully earned it.
But judging from the media’s reaction, Democrats are most apprehensive about being portrayed as “socialists,” which one expects isn’t as popular, even theoretically speaking, in suburban areas or Middle America as it is among the blue-check Twitterati and journalists in urban newsrooms.
New York magazine’s Jonathan Chait, one of the few left-of-center pundits willing to occasionally criticize Democrats for their collectivist tendencies, recently penned an article headlined, “Trump Calls the Democratic Party Socialist. He’s Lying,” in which he contends that both the leftward lurch of Democrats and the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders have been overstated for political reasons. A number of Democrat candidates, he says, have already rejected the word “socialist.”
Rebuffing the “s” word doesn’t make you any less socialist than embracing the word “capitalist” makes you a champion of free markets. No, these presidential candidates aren’t latter-day Trotskys, but contemporary Democrats, who have long favored tighter controls and bigger government, are now far more inclined to embrace proto-socialistic policies than they are liberal (in the genuine sense of the word) ones. By any fair reading, their agendas can be described as socialistic.
For starters, nearly every Democrat candidate now frames his or her political case within the context of a class struggle. Every one proposes fixing the scourge of “inequality,” not by loosening regulatory controls or finding ways to create a more meritocratic society, but by confiscating wealth and redistributing it to the alleged victims of capitalism. Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s confiscatory “wealth tax,” although ostensibly about funding her pet projects, is sold as a way of instituting state-induced societal fairness.
She’s not alone. These days, the left’s big argument is one giant zero-sum economic fallacy—the idea, for example, that successful Americans are “taking” bigger pieces of the pie than they deserve, to the detriment of society. The argument, the spirit, the aim, and the execution have far more in common with Karl Marx than with Adam Smith.
The fact that Democrats propose using our vast capitalistic success to create this hybrid system doesn’t change the tenor or dogmatic nature of their agenda. Nor does sticking the word “democratic” in front of “socialist” make them any less dangerous. For one thing, socialists who operate in “democratic” nations do so because they have no choice. For another, democratically instituting redistributive policies doesn’t make those policies any less authoritarian, even if they are adopted incrementally.
When President Trump promised in his latest State of the Union that “America will never be a socialist country,” it surprised a lot of Democrats, who didn’t seem to fully comprehend their own ideological position. I’m not sure why. You might have socialistic tendencies, for instance, if you propose a federally run health-care system that bans consumers from purchasing private medical insurance, as leading presidential candidate Kamala Harris has done. This isn’t just another tax increase or new regulation. While you’re not technically suggesting that the Politburo run the means of production, you’re certainly headed in that direction.
You might also be a socialist if you propose a government takeover of the energy sector, which is what every politician who supports the Green New Deal is doing. Even if we stretch the imagination and concede, for the sake of argument, that these Democrats didn’t endorse the car-banning, cow fart-eliminating proposal offered by socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, ridding America of 90 percent of its most affordable, most efficient, and predominant energy sources in 10— or 20, or 40—years would necessitate a giant, coercive government project that would bring unprecedented intrusions into American life.
That and the fact that Bernie doesn’t conceal his hunger for socialism while the others realize the sting of that label and try to deny it.
You can slap “Democratic” on anything. The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea comes to mind, but does anyone believe that place represents democracy? Well, neither do “Democratic” socialists. That is democratic ONCE, and that is when you vote away all your rights and freedoms.
@Deplorable Me:
Refresh my memory: Was it Marx or Lenin who predicted that the working class would eventually revolt against the increasingly repressive yoke of capitalism and embrace socialism? Communism? There are disturbing hints that this is happening in America today. Our middle class is drifting further and further into the lower class and socialism is becoming more and more attractive to a growing demographic of increasingly frustrated poor people. Yes, they are bring lied to, look no further than the failures of socialist experiments Worldwide for proof of that. But what matters is that Americans are taking the bait in increasing numbers, and that does not bode well for our nation.
@George Wells: I believe those leaning towards socialism are those out of college over the past 10-20 years that have been indoctrinated in left wing ideology. They got deeply in debt getting an education that has no market value believing a “college education” was a meal ticket to wealth. Meanwhile, due to heavy taxation and regulation drove manufacturing, along with the jobs, away leaving only service and tech jobs. This is why Obama’s “recovery” yielded mostly low paying and part time jobs. No wonder socialism looks attractive to them, but they are too ignorant to realize it was socialism that put them in that spot.
I worked in an industry that was craftsman and technical dependent and those jobs paid WELL even though they don’t require degrees. You won’t find a socialist in the lot and very, very few liberals because they see the miracle of capitalism, how with some talent, work ethic and dedication young people can work their way up to good pay and benefits.
Socialism is going to be a tough sell if Trump’s economy keeps growing and expanding. The left’s problem is they don’t like to mingle with the common folk and they believe their own propaganda.
@Deplorable Me:
And where is all of that now? The exodus of manufacturing jobs began way BEFORE Obama, so don’t try to pin that on him. By 1970 the production of cameras in the USA was already being eclipsed by Japan. WE keep buying more and more foreign cars. (Why?) And correct me if I’m wrong, but haven’t Harley Davidson, GM and Ford shipped production abroad during Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign? We’ve been hemorrhaging manufacturing jobs for decades. Long enough for the shrinking middle class to panic. Then it’s the Marx (or Lenin) model come true, for better or worse. And it’ll probably be for worse.
@George Wells: Obama didn’t help the situation and seemed happy to be rid of it, but no, restrictive policies and out of control union wages go beyond Obama. However, Trump is having great success bringing those jobs back.
HD and GM have, Ford hasn’t. However, who knows about HD; they did so due to tariffs, but Trump is also resolving that problem as well. I’m not sure GM knows WHAT to do.
I think the middle class is doing far better today.
@Deplorable Me:
Sadly, tariffs are what protected American workers from the unfair competition that is enabled by cheap foreign labor. We cannot compete with workers making a dollar a week. It is more than raw material prices, and more than balance-of-trade. It is labor more than anything else. We’ve traded our manufacturing capacity for cheap Chinese everything, and I doubt that we can get it back. If we finally do, by then China will be in possession of ALL of our proprietary data, and they’ll use it to STILL run circles around us in World markets.