It predates people like McCarthy by decades. The Bolshevik Revolution scared the wealthy to death. Losing their wealth was only part of what they feared. The Bolsheviks killed the wealthy and then took their money and property. So, they’ve been painting anything resembling socialism as evil out of self-preservation. They have dragged out this meme year after year. As unemployment and poverty have become more structural it leaves ordinary people less fearful of the word.
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The 35%(?) or so have been so brainwashed and so hectored with socialism as some kind of evil to be avoided I think all we can do is to create and improve programs like SS and Medicare and let this irrational fear of what people call socialism just wither on the vine. I’ve asked people WTF do you think SS and Medicare is?
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Luv the photo. I used to give this lecture to dummies. Wasted my time.
Oh, you’re so damned right, but it’s over the head of dummies who are so abysmally ignorant that if it doesn’t fit on a bumper sticker they cannot absorb it.
Excellent article.
We have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor.
Dr. King spoke the truth.
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I expected the article might address this, but it didn’t.
Socialism is the government owning the means of production. It’s also Social Security and OSHA. There should be two different words for these things.
Merriam-Webster lists several versions of the first meaning, then includes this discussion:
“In the many years since socialism entered English around 1830, it has acquired several different meanings. It refers to a system of social organization in which private property and the distribution of income are subject to social control, but the conception of that control has varied, and the term has been interpreted in widely diverging ways, ranging from statist to libertarian, from Marxist to liberal. In the modern era, “pure” socialism has been seen only rarely and usually briefly in a few Communist regimes. Far more common are systems of social democracy, now often referred to as democratic socialism , in which extensive state regulation, with limited state ownership, has been employed by democratically elected governments (as in Sweden and Denmark) in the belief that it produces a fair distribution of income without impairing economic growth.”
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“The Communist Manifesto” by Marx scared the shit out of the ruling class in Europe such that they made improvements in working conditions.
That’s likely why it took hold in Asia and not Europe. Russia was effectively a feudal society in 1917 and ripe of a French style revolution.
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Eventually, perhaps, but the Manifesto was obsure for decades. Only in the 1870s did it achieve any sort of wider readership – and even then it’s not absolutely clear what causal effect it had on the rise of social democracy in Europe.
People (including Democrat politicians) seem to forget that Medicare Advantage (I think a Republican idea with a Republican propaganda name) even exists. A third of new Medicare recipients choose it. I did. Traditional Medicare and Medicare Advantage: two different things with the same permitted fee schedules.
With Medicare Advantage you don’t have to add hospitalization or prescription drug options. They are included in the basic premium, which is the same or about the same (premiums differ slightly in all of Medicare for reasons I don’t understand) for MA and basic Medicare.
The typical MA deal includes a dental and a vision program, neither total insurance. The dental deal includes free cleanings and Xrays, and everything else is charged according to the Medicare fee schedule, which in my case is about 20% cheaper than the regular fees the dentist would charge. The vision program pays for the eye doctor and certain amounts for frames, lenses, etc. All of this stuff is almost exactly the same as the Aetna federal employee plan I used to have. That’s because with the federal employee plan I chose was an “HMO” plan, although not a real HMO like Kaiser Permanente. When I lived in Kaiser Permanente areas I picked that. It’s real Socialized Medicine, but unlike a national deal it has to compete with other kinds of plans.
Another factor in medicine today is that, at least in the big city, big hospital organizations are taking over a lot of different kinds of practices and the docs end up on salary instead of running their own small business, so they are sort of becoming Kaiser Permanente themselves.
Even traditional Medicare contracts with private companies to do a lot of their work. It’s not all done by federal employees.
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Eastman didn’t underperform. These are the results of every NE2 Congressional race back to 2006.
2006 Democratic wave year.
Terry 54.7% Esch 45.3%
2008 NE2 gives Electoral vote to Obama.
Terry 51.9% Esch 48.1%
2010 Republican wave year.
Terry 60.8% White 39.2%
2012 Presidential election year.
Terry 50.8% Ewing 49.2%
2014 Terry screws up during shut down.
Ashford 49.0% Terry 45.7% Laird 5.3%
2016 Presidential election year.
Bacon 48.9% Ashford 47.7% Laird 3.3%
2018 Democratic wave year.
Bacon 51.0% Eastman 49.0%
Eastman did on par or better than the rest of the Democratic candidates in terms of the percentage of the vote she won. Ashford only slipped ahead of Terry in 2014, because of a third party candidate drawing votes from Terry as a result of stupid comments he made about how much he needed his congressional salary during the government shut down. The only candidate to win a larger percentage was Ewing and that was only by .2%.
Numbers are from Ballotpedia and Wikipedia.
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“America will never be a socialist country,” President Donald Trump has often proclaimed, identifying socialism with Venezuela, Cuba, and other undemocratic societies.
There are also repressive capitalist regimes such as Singapore, Hungary, Turkey, Philippines, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Somalia. Although the Communist party runs China, the economy is primarily capitalist with little worker rights. Russia operates like a third world capitalist kleptocracy. Unlike the examples such as North Korea, the repression in these countries are not attributed to capitalism.
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Hard to believe, old soldier, but there are millions – millions – of US citizens who know NONE of this. And don’t forget SS and Medicare.
These same folks do not know that Dems did those programs.
My readings say that the threat of Communism coming to Europe triggered improvements in working conditions in Europe. That much is not in dispute. Marx wanted to scare the upper classes and he succeeded.
"…The Nazi’s even cynically named themselves “The National Socialist German Workers’ Party…
And this causes those muddled over the word even more muddling as they conflate fascism with socialism. Can’t win with those who slept through 7th grade civics.
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Actually I believe something similar has, but it would not work well on impotus.
Your comments are well done on this subject. I plan to put them in my cache of “thoughts and quotes”. Thank you.
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I grew up in the district that Ms. Ocasio represents. Although she will surely win another term and has raised big money she is getting a strong push from a local guy named John Cummings. I know it is axiomatic on this board to love the AOC persona but she is accused of neglecting her district in pursuit of national fame. Additionally, the socialist thing is being used against her. A long career in politics is not a given and she should not assume it will be. First time representatives usually keep a low profile and spend more time worrying about the district than giving speeches for Bernie Sanders who, by the way, calls himself a socialist. I hope she wins but lowers her national profile next term and spends more time in the Bronx.
Well Marx said it would eat itself up and from what I’ve seen he had a point. I really wish folks would drop taking GOP bait and MSM taking points and drop the use of the word socialism ( since it seems hardly any0one knows what it means ) and argue against crony capitalism and a rigged playing field. Fix capitalism so that it fits America’s promise and we’ll all be better off.
This is just so wrong. This is a highly educated (in the top 10) congressional districts, and these are areas where Democrats did very well. Not so much for Berner Kira “nationalize your healthcare” Eastman.
Look at Davids in KS-3 +4 R district (suburban Kansas city + KC KS) Davids won 53.3% to 44.2%. Yoder who she beat, won in 2016 with 51.3% of the vote to 40.6%.
This is the type of shift that happened in other highly educated historically R suburban districts. This is basically NE-2, nearly a mirror image, except Davids ran repeatedly stating she was NOT a progressive and was for “Midicare buy in/Public Option” not a nationalized health care system.
Davids and others are going to cruze, Biden will win NE-2 by 8-10%, Eastman is likely to lose.
It is a case study how “progressives” in swing districts elect republicans.
What is wrong about it? Those are the facts on the ground. All of those candidates ran to her right like you suggested, but as the facts show she did better or on par with prior Democratic candidates in terms of actual vote percentages going back over a decade.
People keep drawing comparisons with KS-3 because they are both R+4, but given that KS-3 has been represented by a Democrat for 12 of the last 20 years while NE-2 has been represented by a Democrat for 2 of the last 20 years, and that only because Terry stuck his foot in it, there are obviously more nuanced differences in the districts that aren’t captured by that single data point. The PVI numbers are useful as part of a larger examination of similarities between the districts, but they aren’t the entire picture in and of themselves.
That doesn’t even get into the differences in quality between the moderate candidates on offer in each race. On one hand you have Sharice Davids a younger female candidate representative of the increasing diversity of the party and with a dynamic personal story that would appeal to many young progressives even if they don’t agree with her entirely on policy grounds and the other you have Brad Ashford who failed to beat Bacon in 2016 despite the advantages of the incumbancy and it being an election year which typically boosts Democratic turnout.
If someone with the crossover appeals of Davids and her appeal to the zeigeist of an election that saw many young female candidates steping forward to help lead the Democrat party was the alternative she likely would have won the nomination. Yet that isn’t who was put forward as the moderate option, but an older white male who had failed to defeat the now incumbent candidate back when he was the one with the advantage of the incumbancy and I say that as someone who has voted for Ashford twice.
Personally, I would have been thrilled to have a moderate like Davids to vote for. Someone who has crossover appeal with moderates and progressives, but that isn’t what has been stepping up to run. Instead we get guy who lost last time and as a change up this time around guy who lost last time’s wife.