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Most socialist policies are popular. The word “socialism” is unpopular.
This right here is the correct answer. The cold war propaganda against the Soviet Union has poisoned the general american view of the words socialism and communism. However, every single socialist policy the United States has is insanely popular with the general public.
I would be curious to know how those polled would define capitalism and socialism. Even ignoring the ones that would boil down to cartoonishly good and evil, I would assume that there is a huge disconnect in what each side thinks those terms mean.
I suspect that if you had asked the same people how they felt about policies and priorities without explaining which are capitalist and which are socialist, and included a broad spectrum of ideas ranging from one extreme to the other, you’d see a very different picture emerge.
I’ll be very honest. I’m extremely active in politics and been so for around 2 decades. My family navigated the political spectrum right and are now pretty progressive-left by US calibration. By European I’m most closely aligned with Social Democrats and the Nordic Model.
Where I’m being honest is that I don’t think socialism or Democratic socialism is well defined, and I don’t think even the left does a good job conveying consistency on this. It certainly doesn’t help that there are far-right astroturfers trying to wedge-drive the issue and complicate it.
For instance, if Bernie Sanders pitched himself as a Social Democrat as opposed to a Democratic Socialist, which is precisely what his policy proposals are in reality, then that would be SO much easier to convey to the less informed, apathetic voters of this country.
That is, a truly mixed economy with strongly regulated markets in favor of the consumer, environment, and promoting small-business competition while curving corporate conglomerates too big to fail. One where collective bargaining / unions are strong; where Democracy is decoupled and inoculated from private money with strong campaign finance and election laws. Where select industries like healthcare are nationalized in the hands of the people via Democratic institutions, but there is still some market capitalism and profit to be had to assume risk and investment. Where the rich are taxed heavily and social safety nets strong for those to get back on their feet.
It doesn’t help that big D Dems work against this at every turn…
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Theory: capitalism, socialism, communism, and many other terms have had their meanings permanently obfuscated and made fluid, and biases colored so heavily that any survey or poll done on this topic is utterly and completely meaningless.
Once again, the American working class wants socialism, but don’t understand it.
They love socialism, they hate the word “socialism”.
Truly the dumbest population in the West.
“Socialism is still unpopular…”
Cool cool cool, so just show me an overlay of how these audiences define “socialism”, without any hints given.
And hey data analyst… Don’t be sneaky and aggregate the overtly racist answers into the “closest” group to mask how ugly they are… just have a dedicated group so we can understand the true % that basically said socialism is “free stuff for minorities” - but likely in a lot more unnecessary and incorrect words a la Miss South Carolina’s, “and as such, in the case of being US Americans and, as such, in the Iraq, and such as.”
We already have many socialist systems in the US. People like to just simplify it by saying we just have a capitalist system, we don’t. Things like fire/police departments, social security, public libraries, water utility, and roads are socialist. Capitalism can help innovate in some cases, but socialism is necessary to uphold necessities that benefit the public.
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You’d probably have to dig deeper on what people think about both of these things to actually learn more. Obviously capitalism completely unchained very few would support. Same goes for the most extreme possible take on socialism.
Dems need to lay it on thick about how social policies are a good thing-- much better than filling rich asshole’s pockets-- and that the Cons have been fueling the hatred and twisting the definition of the words
