‘Democratic’ Socialism: Let’s Have the Details

Member Group : Jerry Shenk

Six decades ago, the Democratic Party professed to align with America’s working classes within a free-market capitalist system, supported secure borders, and advocated entitlements only for needy citizens. All three postures are clearly outdated.

After years of hints and false starts, cumulatively, the party’s 2020 White House wannabes are openly expressing a revolutionary socialist agenda.

Significant numbers of today’s Democrats embrace the “socialist” label, and some are rehabilitating “Communist,” as well. Both will come back to haunt the party when the 2020 election finally focuses on competing visions of the nation’s future. Meanwhile, attentive voters are unenthused about Democrats’ primary season socialist message.

In effect, candidates are telling Americans: “Democrats are benevolent.” “Don’t worry, we’ll provide.” “Don’t think. We’ll do your thinking for you.”

Democratic candidates’ promises of free college, free medicine – free everything – inevitably boil down to more graft for special interests that generally vote for Democrats, and, as always, middle-class Americans would bear the costs. But socialism appeals to enough under-educated, self-interested voters that informed Americans must take it seriously.

Voters are entitled to some straight, detailed answers to essential questions about the candidates’ positions and proposals:

  • Is confiscating the earned assets of certain classes of people in order to redistribute them to other classes constitutional? Specifically, why or why not?
  • Precisely what is your argument for banning private health insurance, including seniors’ popular Advantage Plans, and forcing Americans into a universal government-run health system?
  • How does America – or, for that matter, do I – benefit from forcing the general public, including non-degreed taxpayers, to fund Ashley’s and Ryan’s Bachelors/Masters/PhDs in Gender Studies or Art History? As an aside, has “progressive” higher education finally sunk so low that a useless combination of enormous self-regard, intolerance and cluelessness is its most-common product?
  • How, exactly, is America improved by permitting entry to more uninvited, unskilled, illegal aliens like the millions who have already overburdened our schools, stretched entitlements and increased crime rates?
  • Why must the U.S. crack down on carbon-based energy production and usage when America has already reduced carbon emissions, while India and China, far more populous nations, are significantly increasing theirs?
  • Should abortion practitioners’ purposeful neglect allow babies who survive botched abortion procedures to die? Should the law give special dispensation to doctors who permit infant deaths?
  • What types of firearms would Democrats ban? Who will be authorized to confiscate the millions of them out there?
  • Cumulatively, what will your policy proposals actually cost? What tax rates must be imposed on each income bracket to fund them?

The party’s base consists largely of history and civics illiterates, so Democrats overestimate normal Americans’ tolerance for socialist polemics. It will be fascinating to observe how their socialist message plays in November among the party’s new-ish cohort of middle-class suburban voters.

In a digital age, every Democratic candidate’s 2019 public statements remain on record, so it’s too late to tack toward moderation. Democrats have already scripted their opponents’ political ads and, in the process, have likely written their own electoral epitaphs.

https://www.pottsmerc.com/opinion/jerry-shenk-democratic-socialism-let-s-have-the-details/article_9b8b3716-412c-11ea-aaa2-cf0afe084f15.html