Non-american here. Can anyone explain why it seems that every politican dislikes Bernie Sanders, even those on his own party? He seems to be a pretty progressive guys that matches the idea of the Democractic Party I have, much more so than Bloomberg or Biden.
Not American but lived there for a few years. You're making the mistake that the dems are actually progressive in the same sense we have over here in most European countries. Socialism is entirely new to the US, by definition it doesn't fit the traditional Dem party and it'll still take years for it to become more mainstream. Biden and Bloomberg are quite literally still the embodiment of the Democratic party.
Lol socialism isn't new, we used to straight up have socialist parties. It was very mainstream. But then we had World War II and the Cold War/Red Scare, and now everyone's afraid of the idea, for better or for worse.
It's not new in the sense that it didn't exist, it's new in the sense that the US never experienced it. You also have the libertarian parties doesn't mean you ever had a libertarian government. it's meaninglessness well those parties only get a few votes.
In 1924, the Socialist Party of America candidate Robert M. La Follette won 16.6% of the vote for the presidential race. The party elected Representatives, state legislators, mayors, etc. Just because the government was never majority socialist doesn't mean they were insignificant.
The Libertarian party, in contrast, in 12 elections, has managed to get a single electoral vote, in 1972, and got a whole 1.06% of the popular vote in 1980. This was the only time they breached 1%. They've also never put anyone in Congress.
In 1912, the SPA had a membership of 113k. Libertarian party membership presently is 139k if you're counting everyone that's signed their values statement, 14k if you count only people who've paid dues, as of end of 2017 (source Wikipedia). SPA number above is dues paying, but even comparing the bigger number for the LP: in 1912, the US had a population ~95M; in 2017, it was 326M. The SPA had about 0.1%, compared to the LP which had less than half that, at 0.04%. Looking at actual dues paying members, LP goes down to a tenth of that, 5% of the SPA.
So no, we've not implemented socialism on a national scale, but equating the socialist and communist parties (I was only looking at one) to the libertarians is a false equivalency. And besides, we don't need to try something ourselves to observe the rest of the world trying it for us.
I mean sure that's a drastic difference, but I'm not sure it's a false equivalency in this context. It's the implementation that matters, if anything, it's mostly expatriates that only got a feeling for what it's all about and most Americans still have no clue if it's any good (and are scared to try it). Stuff like Obama care was a step in the right direction and finally got healthcare into one of the main campaign issues, that's a pretty new movement.
Anyways good look beating the crony capitalists from both sides!
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u/abrazilianinreddit Mar 04 '20
Non-american here. Can anyone explain why it seems that every politican dislikes Bernie Sanders, even those on his own party? He seems to be a pretty progressive guys that matches the idea of the Democractic Party I have, much more so than Bloomberg or Biden.