Re: POTUS 45.15 - Now With More Yacht Banging Stories!
That half was gonna vote for Trump anyhow so who cares? And yeah they can try and spin him as a communist but it's not that hard to retort that we used to have the much higher taxes on the rich and the country was better off for it. Most dem voters will understand.
I think a lot of people are still living in the 80s when if you whispered "socialist" it was stick a fork in him, he's done.
Reasons I think that has changed:
1. Going to the well too often.
Because that was true, Republicans went to that card
every time: they have screamed that every Democrat is a socialist since Mondale. Its effect has worn down.
2. Confusion of intensity and size. This is your point, above. Yes, 40% of the nation is pinwheel-eyed insane about socialism, but that 40% are lockstep Republican voters. They are meaningless; we will never reach them. Our job is to reach the other 60%.
3. Pragmatism. You don't run on a socialist platform in America by calling it socialism, you run by talking about social security and Medicare and how those programs have made life so much better for so many people. There are ideologues on each tail but most Americans are pragmatists: they'll experiment with solutions that can plausibly work. That in fact is how the supply side camel got its nose in the tent: it seemed plausible. After a 30-year trial of course it's exposed as bogus. Our problem is we never yell "repeal and replace" about the warping of the tax code since 1980.
4. Anger. People are f-cking angry. They resent the rich because they should. They know they're being f-cked without lube by the ruling class. They are starting to catch on that the ruling class controls not just the GOP but a big chunk of the Democratic party as well. The evil face of this anger is social populism and the racism and xenophobia of the Trumpies. The good face is economic populism and the will to restore a deeply progressive tax structure and restart inter-generational mobility based on merit. America is, at heart, a meritocracy, and the Trump family is now the public face of the ineptitude and injustice of trickle down.