White House candidate Sanders defends ‘democratic socialism’ label

Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders said Thursday that economic security is essential to Americans achieving true freedom, a central tenet in his political philosophy of “democratic socialism”.

“No one understood better than FDR the connection between American strength at home and our ability to defend America at home and across the world”. This is not a radical idea, it is a conservative idea. “It is an idea and practice that exists in every other major country on earth”. People are not truly free when they have no health care. “It means what Franklin Delano Roosevelt said when he fought for guaranteed economic rights for all Americans. And It is time that we did”. “And, by the way, nearly everything he proposed was called “socialist.’ Social Security, which transformed life for the elderly in this country was ‘socialist.’ The concept of the ‘minimum wage” … socialist”.

Sanders insisted that, unlike a regular socialist, he does not want the government to run the entire economy – however, he does want significantly more government-funded programs that he believes will make life easier for the middle and working classes. Democratic socialists favor as much decentralization as possible.

“So let me define for you, simply and straightforwardly, what democratic socialism means to me”, Sanders told the auditorium full of students, who’d spent hours waiting in the rain to see the presidential hopeful speak.

Democratic socialism means that we must reform a political system in America today which is not only grossly unfair but, in many respects, corrupt. “Denmark is a market economy”.

On Thursday, he sought to do exactly that.

“So the next time you hear me attacked as a socialist, like tomorrow, remember this: I don’t believe government should take over the grocery store down the street or own the means of production, but I do believe that the middle class and the working families who produce the wealth of this country deserve a decent standard of living and that their incomes should go up, not down”, Sanders said.

The Democratic presidential hopeful also called for the creation of an organization “like NATO” to confront the security threats of the 21st century – “an organization that emphasizes cooperation and collaboration to defeat the rise of violent extremism and importantly to address the root causes underlying these brutal acts”. Donald Trump keeps calling him a communist. But neither Roosevelt nor Johnson ever described his own policies as socialist, and the Vermont Senator never clearly explained why he favors the term used by their reactionary opponents. While there was a few controversy about whether Sanders was delaying the speech, aides said they booked the venue a week ago. But he also wanted people to know that is very much not “socialism”.

“The word “revolution” scares my mother because she thinks of the Cold War, communism, Stalin”, said Matthew Collura, a 24-year-old organizer for the grassroots group Millennials for Bernie. “Bernie scares our mothers’ generation”. And on Thursday, he tried to answer one of them – and shoehorned in a few foreign policy in for good measure. Sanders to give the American public a reason to believe in a word they have always been taught to fear. The Sanders campaign is pretty confident both publicly and privately that “democratic socialism” can be easily turned into an asset. “I don’t want to be cynical, but I want to be realistic”.

But his soaring popularity a year out from the election reflects a thawing of the public’s reservations, especially among the younger voters that make up the bulk of his support.

His political ideology has raised questions about his electability as he looks to challenge Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton.

The former secretary of state is leading by roughly 52 percent to Sanders’s 33 percent, according to a November 12 NY Times/CBS News survey. My vision is not just making modest changes around the edge. “We need to create a culture which, as Pope Francis reminds us, cannot just be based on the worship of money”, Sanders said.