Photos: Gage Skidmore
Democratic presidential candidates Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders (left) and former Vice President Joe Biden
For months, many voters appeared almost paralyzed with fear they might make the wrong decision in choosing the best Democrat to achieve their urgent goal of defeating President Donald Trump. Super Tuesday suddenly made voters’ decisions easier by quickly reducing too many candidates to the two best-known options: former Vice President Joe Biden and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders.
But now, there’s another danger. With toxic political poison billowing out of the White House daily, it would be suicidal for Democrats to divide into two hostile camps and begin tearing each other apart. Ultimately, Democrats have to come together at their convention in Milwaukee to rid the nation of a corrupt, hate-spewing president who revels in turning Americans against each other.
Biden and Sanders have led starkly different political careers, but they really don’t live in radically different political worlds. They’re both progressive national leaders dedicated to restoring America’s democratic values and basic human decency destroyed by Trump’s vicious, divisive policies.
Their biggest difference is how long each believes it might take to achieve shared goals such as providing affordable health care for every American and reversing the destruction of our planet by the climate crisis. Their political opponents will have a lot to say about that. But there’s really only one radically un-American candidate in the presidential race who fails to grasp the beautiful ideals enshrined in our Constitution protecting equal treatment under the law for every American regardless of race, religion, economic class or national origin. That’s Trump.
Serious Candidates
There’s something else Biden and Sanders have in common. Both are serious, substantial politicians who have often been reduced to cartoon caricatures by the media.
Biden’s so-called gaffes throughout his political career have long been fodder for late-night comedians. Some are harmless human word jumbles from a politician who had to overcome a stutter to speak in public. Others simply confirm journalist Michael Kinsley’s definition that a gaffe in Washington is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. As Biden noted at the signing, President Obama passing the Affordable Care Act really was a big effing deal.
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The media assist Trump in perpetuating his distorted, dishonest attacks on Sanders by repeatedly identifying Sanders as “a self-described democratic socialist” without ever defining exactly what “democratic socialism” means.
Spoiler alert: Despite the false charges by Trump and former Republican Gov. Scott Walker, his Wisconsin water boy, democratic socialism is just the opposite of top-down communist dictatorship. Democratic socialism is a grassroots-up, progressive movement rooted in democratic elections and protecting every American’s right to vote. It’s Trump and Republicans who purge voter rolls and create obstacles to suppress the right to vote. That’s why Vladimir Putin is continuing Russia’s propaganda campaign to disrupt our democracy and reelect Trump.
Milwaukee has always been proud of its nearly four decades of squeaky-clean city government under democratic socialist mayors. The city’s last great socialist mayor was Frank Zeidler, who served from 1948 to 1960. Zeidler’s mayoral term coincided with a real national witch hunt in the ’50s led by Wisconsin’s scurrilous Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy falsely accusing progressives in government of communist subversion. But McCarthy never dared level his dishonest charges locally against Zeidler’s widely admired socialist administration in Milwaukee.
In 1936, following the Great Depression, conservative Republican publisher Henry Luce put Dan Hoan, Milwaukee’s longest serving socialist mayor of 24 years, on the cover of Time magazine. Citing Hoan’s expanded public employment during hard times to build public parks throughout the city and his responsible fiscal management, Time concluded: “Under him, Milwaukee has become perhaps the best governed city in the U.S.”
Popular Programs
So, if democratic socialist governments were so successful, why aren’t there more politicians around today calling themselves democratic socialists? The obvious answer is the Socialist Party of America faded when the Democratic Party adopted many of its most popular programs and began implementing them. There’s a direct line connecting Social Security and Unemployment Compensation under President Franklin Roosevelt, Medicare and Medicaid under President Lyndon Johnson and the Affordable Care Act under President Barack Obama. Republicans opposed every one of those Democratic programs that benefit every American who needs them.
Sanders may call himself a democratic socialist while Biden calls himself a New Deal Democrat, but both should acknowledge that’s not really such a radical distinction. There’s no reason to deny the democratic socialist roots of the Democrats’ most universally popular policies. Marquette University’s Law School polls continue to show Biden and Sanders are both viewed positively by about two-thirds of Wisconsin’s Democratic voters.
There’s really nothing radical about the progressive policies of either Democratic candidate. Both should unite to fight Trump’s red-baiting and childish name-calling. You can count on Trump’s crudest supporters to turn those ugly slurs into vicious playground chants to be shouted at his hate rallies. That’s what passes for Republican presidential campaigning under Trump.
