Mediaboss Marketing

I was quite surprised at the large number of readers who chose to respond to my commentary last month on the subject of socialism. All but a few were quite laudatory.

One negative response, however, has prompted the need for a correction and clarification.

Although Robert Stepp and I probably will disagree on many issues, he observed that I was confusing social programs with socialism. And he is correct.

The dictionary definition of socialism states that it is a political, social and economic philosophy encompassing a range of economic and social systems characterized by social ownership of the means of production and workers self-management of enterprises.

With that definition in mind, I must report that I dont know of anyone who really wants socialism. In addition, I must admit that I, too, think true socialism is a bad system particularly because it involves society or government ownership of production. Production is best provided by capitalism.

But we definitely do need government-operated social programs to provide various needed social services.

For instance, friend Jerry Martin asked:

Would you rather have only private military? Would you rather have only privately owned roads? Would you rather have only privately controlled police? Court systems? No more social security? No more Medicare or Medicaid?

But on the need for both capitalism and social programs, Lynn Ely wrote:

Excellent summation on how both socialism and capitalism benefit us in different ways. Its not an either/or. Its an and. As a healthcare professional, I have wanted to see the US embrace a universal health care system like every other industrial nation in the world has. I am dumbfounded as to why the American people think that the for profit model serves us better.

Richard Stormsgaard, in a polite response, also called attention to the problem caused by referring to socialism rather than social programs. He wrote:

No wonder there is so much confusion about socialism, and it benefits the far right and the far left, and is a threat to the rest of us.

But it was particularly satisfying to me to have Dr. Jeff Kane comment because of how much I have been enjoy reading his columns. He wrote:

Your points are especially applicable to healthcare financing. Today a quarter to a third of our healthcare dollars go to insurance intermediaries. These corporations have nothing whatsoever to do with healthcare. They only handle the money that flows between us and providers, taking a large cut in the process.

Were paying much more than necessary largely because opponents of the single-payer plan call it socialist to scare the electorate. But its not, since care is entirely private and the government handles the money with no profit motive.

Dr. Kane added that the administrative costs of Medicare average only 4 to 5% compared to 25 to 33% for other healthcare systems.

Another respondent, who used a pseudonym rather than his or her name, wrote:

The term Socialism is a dogwhistle used to phreak out Republicans and scare them. This applies especially to older voters who lived through the Red Scare during the Cold War years. In their minds the S word is equivalent to the C word, Communism and the chants of Better dead than Red. It is the epitome of negative campaigning.

Then I received Patricia Sharps message, thanking me for explaining how capitalism functions best in tandem with socialism.

Then she added the historic remarks by President Harry Truman in Syracuse, N.Y., on Oct. 10, 1952. He said:

Socialism is a scare word they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years.

Socialism is what they called public power. Socialism is what they called social security.

Socialism is what they called farm price supports.

Socialism is what they called bank deposit insurance.

Socialism is what they called the growth of free and independent labor organizations.

Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.

When the Republican candidate inscribes the slogan Down With Socialism on the banner of his great crusade, that is really not what he means at all.

What he really means is Down with Progress down with Franklin Roosevelts New Deal, and down with Harry Trumans fair Deal. Thats all he means.

So isnt it time for us to stop quibbling over the two labels and realize that we definitely need various social services in an otherwise generally capitalistic society?

Darrell Berkheimer, who lives in Grass Valley, is a frequent contributor to The Union. He has seven books available through Amazon. His sixth, Essays from The Golden Throne, includes 60 columns published by The Union, plus a dozen western travel and photo essays. Contact him at mtmrnut@yahoo.com.

Visit link:
Darrell Berkheimer: Confusing social programs with socialism - The Union of Grass Valley

Depending on whom you ask, socialism might be described as historically inevitable, evil incarnate, a utopian fantasy, or a scientific method. Most fundamentally, socialism is a political, philosophic, and economic system in which the means of productionthat is, everything that goes into making goods for useare collectively controlled, rather than owned by private corporations as they are under capitalism, or by aristocrats under feudalism.

In seeking to make the case for socialismand to understand impediments to a world governed by peoples needs rather than corporate profitsthinkers in the socialist tradition have grappled with topics as varied as colonialism, gender, race, art, sex, psychology, economics, medicine, ecology, and countless other issues. As such, this Reading List makes no claim of being exhaustive; rather, it seeks to achieve two modest goals: to acquaint readers with a handful of key socialist preoccupations, and to demonstrate how the core concepts of socialist thought have been articulated at different historical moments and taken up by women and people of color.

Eugene W. Schulkind,The Activity of Popular Organizations during the Paris Commune of 1871(1960)

What kind of society do socialists want? Many unfamiliar with the socialist tradition assume the Soviet Union or other putatively communist states represent socialist ideals come to fruition. But for many socialists throughout history, the most generative and compelling model is the seventy-two-day social experiment known as the Paris Commune. During their brief time ruling Paris, the communards eliminated the army, secularized education, equalized pay, and implemented numerous feminist initiatives, including establishing child care centers and abolishing the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate children.

Rosa Luxemburg,Reform or Revolution(1900)Socialists uniformly believe that different social arrangements are needed to address social problems, but how might those transformations most effectively come to fruition? One of the major questions that has animated socialist debates throughout the centuries is whether it is possible to achieve socialism through progressive reforms, or whether reforms would only serve to strengthen capitalism. Here the revolutionary presents her thoughts.

Clara Zetkin,1914 Preface to Edward Bellamys Looking Backward (1887)Karl Marx was famously opposed to rigidly outlining what future socialist societies should look like, claiming that this would be like writing recipes for the kitchens of the future. Despite his reticence, many artists, frustrated by the constraints of capitalism and captivated by the promises of socialist futures, have contributed to imagining alternative worlds. Edward Bellamys early science fiction novel Looking Backward presents one attempt at envisioning a socialist society of the futurefree from war, poverty, advertisements, and other unpleasantries. Here, Clara Zetkin, a prominent socialist and feminist activist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (best known for her efforts to establish International Womens Day), introduces the novel.

Eric Foner,Why Is There No Socialism in the United States? (1984)One of the countrys best living historians examines questions that have preoccupied generations: How does the political and economic exceptionalism of the United States shape its historical relationship to socialism? Why does the U.S. working class appear less inclined toward socialist class consciousness than in other advanced capitalist countries?

Cedric Robinson,C.L.R. James and the Black Radical Tradition (1983)Telling the story of C.L.R. James, one of the most important socialist intellectuals of the twentieth century, Cedric Robinson (an intellectual giant in his own right) traces the history of socialism as it crosses continents and oceans. Centering Black radicals, not as a homogenous group but as members of a multifaceted tradition who write as seamlessly about cricket, anticolonial struggles, and class formation, Robinson takes the reader through issues at the heart of socialism.

Combahee River Collective, A Black Feminist Statement (1979)Identity politics has become a controversial and often derided topic in recent years. In this groundbreaking text, the Combahee River Collectivea group of Black feminist socialists named for the location from which Harriet Tubman launched one of her major military missionsunderscores the necessity of rooting anti-capitalist projects in peoples lived experiences: We believe that the most profound and potentially most radical politics come directly out of our own identity.

Sarah Leonard,What is Socialist Feminism? (2020)Teen Vogue may have once evoked adolescent frivolity, but in recent years the magazine has repositioned itself as a serious contributor to the rising popularity of leftist politics among bright young people, thanks to its rigorous and accessible political analysis. Here, socialist feminist writer Sarah Leonard draws from bell hooks, Congressperson Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the 1970s feminist collective Wages for Housework to outline a few key socialist feminist insights. For those interested in pursuing the topic further, Leonard encourages readers to connect with the extensive resources generated by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)s Socialist Feminist working group.

Brett Clark and John Bellamy Foster,Marxs Ecology in the 21st Century(2010)Marx may have written in the nineteenth century, but his insights are still used by contemporary thinkers to understand many of todays most pressing issues. Here Clark and Foster draw from central concepts in Marxs oeuvre to understand how capitalism has led to climate catastrophe and, eventually, might inspire ecosocialism. In their words, The power of Marxs ecology is that it provides a rigorous approach for studying the interchange between society and nature, while taking into consideration the specific ecological conditions of an ecosystem (and the larger web of nature), as well as the particular social interactions as shaped by the capitalist mode of production.

Michael Lowy and Penelope Duggan,Marxism and Romanticism in the Work of Jose Carlos Mariategui(1998)A compelling introduction to Mariategui, the Peruvuan socialist philosopher who merged precolonial history, romanticism, and a trenchant analysis of capitalism. In contrast to the austere world many antisocialists imagine, [s]ocialism according to Mariategui lay at the heart of an attempt at the reenchantment of the world through revolutionary action.

Red Nation,Communism Is the Horizon(2020)In their recent pamphlet, the Indigenous collective Red Nation expounds upon the centrality of queer, Indigenous feminism to their understanding of socialism and their struggle toward a communist horizon.

Support JSTOR Daily! Join our new membership program on Patreon today.

See the article here:
Socialism: Foundations and Key Concepts - JSTOR Daily

Following his surprising victory in 2016, Donald Trump claimed he got 80 percent of the Cuban-American vote in South Florida.

He was exaggerating.

But 2020 was a different story.

Years of courting voters with tough policies toward Cuba and Venezuela, a strong pre-pandemic economy, an unmatched Republican ground game in Miami-Dade and a targeted messaging instilling fear about socialism coming to America helped the president rally Cuban-American voters, part of the reason he carried Florida.

Although Trump lost the election, his inroads into the Cuban-American community in South Florida suggests trouble ahead for the Democratic Party.

Definite numbers for 2020 are still in dispute, but estimates reflect the Democratic Partys poor performance among Cuban Americans, and among Hispanics in general, in Florida.

While Trump won more Cuban-American votes in 2016 than Hillary Clinton in Miami-Dade County, his margin was somewhere between 54 and 57 percent, below Mitt Romneys 60 percent share in 2012.

Separate analyses of tallies in more than 30 Cuban-majority precincts in Hialeah, Westchester and the suburbs of southwest Miami-Dade by Republican and Democratic strategists suggest that four years later, Trump made double-digit gains, getting as much as 69 percent of the Cuban-American vote. Giancarlo Sopo, a Trump campaign staffer, and Carlos Odio, director of the Democratic research firm EquisLabs, independently concluded that President-elect Joe Bidens percentage of the Cuban-American vote in Miami-Dade was in the low 30s.

But this might not be the whole picture, said Eduardo Gamarra, a professor and pollster at Florida International University. While Trump undeniably improved his numbers in heavily Cuban areas like Hialeah and Westchester, Gamarra has found less enthusiasm in more wealthy enclaves like Coral Gables and Key Biscayne.

If youre going to analyze the Cuban vote, you need to account for the vote in the entire county, he said. He cited several exit polls and others done close to the election of people who had already voted, including one poll he was involved in, showing that Trump got around 55 percent of the Cuban-American vote.

Fernand Amandi, a long-term Democratic political strategist who runs the firm Bendixen & Amandi International, believes Bidens share of the Cuban-American vote in Miami-Dade might be about 38 percent, and a bit higher statewide, about 41 percent, according to exit polls and surveys his firm conducted.

But Sopo and Odio disagree with these estimates because many polls proved to be off during this election cycle. If Trump had won only a 55 percent share of the Cuban American vote in Miami-Dade, that number would not reflect the enthusiasm shown by pro-Trump Cuban-American voters nor help explain his overall winning margins in the state, where he got around 371,000 votes more than Biden.

Regardless of the final number, all agree the Biden campaign was not up to the challenge.

Its still a poor result, Amandi said, calling the Biden campaign at times invisible in Miami-Dade County. The COVID-19 pandemic had much to do with it, Odio added, since the campaign did not knock on doors till weeks before the election and decided to limit in-person events, and was unable to match Trumps energetic rallies.

But Trump never really stopped campaigning in Florida. For years now, the Democrats have not been able to match the strong presence of the Republican Party in the community, which has given many Cuban Americans an identity, Florida International University professor Guillermo Grenier wrote in a two-part analysis of the Cuban vote. He is the director of the Florida International University poll that every two years surveys the opinions of Cuban-American voters residing in Miami-Dade.

The fundamental problem is that the Democrats took their foot off the accelerator from engaging with the Cuban community, said Amandi, who was part of the team that helped Barack Obama win the support of Cuban and other Hispanic voters in the county. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign never stopped in its efforts to win the Cuban vote for four years.

While Cuban Americans have been a reliable Republican voting bloc, supporting the traditional themes of low taxes, small government and family values, there was a perfect storm of things particular to this election that ended up helping Republicans, Odio said.

He cites a prosperous economy, the strongman aspect of Trumps character that apparently appealed to some Cubans and other Hispanics, and the election to Congress of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, which further fueled the narrative about the Democratic Party steering to the left. Acts of vandalism amid protests over police brutality and slogans like Defund the police were also exploited by the Trump campaign and Trumps surrogates to instill fear of a progressive left that would dictate Bidens agenda.

The Democrats also learned the hard way that demography is not destiny, as the American political scientist Ruy Teixeira wrote in his influential essay warning that changes in the electorate do not always favor the Democrats.

For many years, Democrats assumed that as older Cuban exiles were being replaced by new Cuban arrivals and younger voters, Cuban Americans would become less Republican. The 2020 presidential election was a surprise: The Florida International University 2020 poll found that many Cuban immigrants coming after 2010 had been registering Republican and becoming strong Trump supporters.

We ran an innovative grassroots and advertising effort that directly engaged newer Cuban arrivals who had been largely ignored by both parties as well as young U.S.-born Cuban Americans in ways that were culturally relevant to them and different than how youd engage my abuelos generation, said Sopo, a Miami native who was one of the architects of the messaging targeting Hispanics in Florida.

The campaign ran a Spanish video ad featuring popular Cuban actress Susana Prez, who is better known among Cubans who came to U.S. after 1980. Another radio ad with fictional characters Marita y Yesenia mimics the speaking style and slang used by recent arrivals.

Most observers agree that there is no single issue that could explain why most Cuban Americans mobilized so forcefully this year to support the president.

Take Hialeah, a working-class city with the most Obamacare enrollees in the nation and where many recently arrived Cubans live. The Trump administration asked the courts to strike down the entire Affordable Care Act. Yet, the Democratic Party was unable to exploit this to its advantage, and Trump grew his share of the vote by 18 points in the city, compared to 2016, beating Biden 67 percent to 32.5 percent, according to Sopos analysis.

There have been several attempts to explain why Cuban Americans in Hialeah would vote for a candidate whose policies could affect their healthcare or have already limited their ability to travel to the island or reunite with family members.

Gamarra believes that working-class Cuban Americans do not behave that differently from non-college-educated white voters, a core group in Trumps base. And Odio argues that many might be attracted to the image of the successful businessman, who is politically incorrect and stands against Washingtons establishment and the media.

Trumps nationalist populism also seems to have resonated with many Cuban Americans.

The chorus of a viral song by the Cuban musical group Tres de La Habana that later became part a Trump campaign ad says, If you feel proud to be Cuban and American, raise your hands!

But beyond issues of cultural identity and nationalist rhetoric, a lot of the burden for Biden doing poorly among Cuban Americans is on the decisions taken by the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign, most analysts agreed.

Gamarra said besides being late, the Biden campaign made other mistakes, like deciding it was not worth investing much in improving their numbers with Cuban Americans and taking for granted that other Hispanic groups, like Colombians, would vote Democratic.

The Biden campaign acknowledged it didnt need to win the support of a majority of Cuban Americans to win Florida but was hoping to match Clintons numbers or compensate for those votes somewhere else, for example, with non-Cuban Hispanics. That didnt happen either.

We built a new conservative coalition in South Florida consisting of Cubans, Colombians, Puerto Ricans and other Latinos in Miami-Dade County, Sopo wrote in a memo obtained by the Miami Herald. This netted approximately 255,657 additional votes for President Trump in Miami-Dade in 2020, which accounted for around 69 percent of his 371,686-vote victory over Joe Biden in Florida.

Amandi was one of the first in sounding the alarm about the Democrats problem with Cuban voters, especially regarding their lack of response to attacks portraying their candidates as socialists or communists, which were successfully deployed against Andrew Gillum in the 2018 Florida gubernatorial race.

The biggest mistake was when it was decided that the accusations about socialism and communism were not going to be rebuked because they were considered absurd, Amandi said.

The Trump campaign made a concerted effort to misleadingly portray Biden as a socialist, posting manipulated images of him embracing Venezuelan strongman Nicols Maduro and claiming he was the candidate of Castro-Chavismo in one of its most viewed ads in South Florida. Such accusations found fertile soil in Miami Cuban media and were amplified on local Miami radio, TV stations, and by social media influencers who had welcomed Trumps tough talk on Cuba and Venezuela.

Shortly after Trumps victory in 2016, Cuban exile groups who felt left out from the policy-making process during the Obama administration became more vocal in their criticism of what they saw as Obamas failed engagement policies with Cuba and concessions made to the Cuban government.

Increased government repression on the island, the Cuban leaderships unwavering support of Maduro in Venezuela, and Cubas reluctance to implement reforms to rescue a rapidly deteriorating economy all reinforced perceptions about the failures of engagement. With its eyes on Florida 2020, Trump vowed in Miami to reverse the prior administrations terrible and misguided deal with the Castro regime, and made Cuba and Venezuela the center of its Latin American policy.

The picture is nuanced: While most Cuban Americans approve of President Trumps sanctions campaign against the Cuban government, they also support many of Obamas policies, such as maintaining diplomatic relations or travel to the island, as shown by the Florida International University 2020 poll. Pro-engagement advocates still contend that Obamas policies did not hurt the Democratic Party. But others believe that misses a crucial point.

The weaponization of U.S. policy towards Cuba was the entry point to help cement the idea that the Democratic Party is the party of socialists, Amandi said.

Then there was the 2020 media environment, with voters watching or reading partisan media, living in information bubbles, and plenty of misinformation circulating among the Hispanic communities, making it difficult for the Democratic campaign messaging to make it through. By the time the campaign started responding to the socialism accusations, it was too late.

Just weeks before the election, Mike Bloomberg financed a round of TV ads featuring members of the Bay of Pigs Brigade and Cuban exile writer Carlos Alberto Montaner pushing back on the accusations that Biden and running mate Kamala Harris were socialists. Internal polling data suggest the ads were able to move the needle in favor of Biden. But the effort came too late to have a larger impact on the race.

However, analysts believe that, with the right strategy, the Democratic Party could again reach the historic support Obama obtained among Cuban Americans in 2012. In that election he won 53 percent of Cuban Americans who cast a ballot on Election Day, and an overall 48 percent of the Cuban-American vote in the state, according to a poll by Bendixen & Amandi.

It would be a mistake for both parties to believe that these numbers are permanent, Amandi said.

Originally posted here:
Invisible campaign and the specter of socialism: Why Cuban Americans fell hard for Trump - Tampa Bay Times

Whats wrong with socialism? I just cant figure out why this seems like such a bad word for so many people. Is it somehow associated with communism? Is that it?

If so, please know that socialism and communism are different things. Communism wants everyone to be equal. Socialism wants everyone to value the whole as much or more than the individual. Socialism is about sharing.

And the thing is, we already have long-term, deeply entrenched socialist programs operating in our society. Medicare, for example, is a socialistic program where we all contribute to a fund that helps the elderly afford health care. The idea is that well all be there at some point and will need help.

And what about the police and the fire department? Again, we all contribute to make sure that we have adequate police and fire protection for all. When you call 911 and ask for the fire department, they dont ask for your fire insurance number; they send the fire trucks no matter your socioeconomic status.

In these examples, we have decided that it is better and fairer to share elderly health care and police and fire protection, among everyone. We have socialistically decided to act as a society rather than a group of individuals.

So, whats the problem with treating health care for everyone just like police and fire protection? We would all contribute a fair share to guarantee good health care for all, as opposed to a system where people can only get the health care they can afford. Isnt adequate health care for all at least equally important as police and fire protection?

The fact that it involves a socialistic approach should make no difference at all. Cant we see adequate health care as a basic human right in an enlightened society?

Lets not let the successful demonization of the concept of socialism prevent us from considering the enormous power and satisfaction inherent in working together as a society for the good of all.

Howard Bashinski, PhD

Oak Creek

Readers around Steamboat and Routt County make the Steamboat Pilot & Todays work possible. Your financial contribution supports our efforts to deliver quality, locally relevant journalism.

Now more than ever, your support is critical to help us keep our community informed about the evolving coronavirus pandemic and the impact it is having locally. Every contribution, however large or small, will make a difference.

Each donation will be used exclusively for the development and creation of increased news coverage.

Here is the original post:
Letter: What's wrong with socialism? | SteamboatToday.com - Steamboat Pilot and Today

The 2020 election might provide a golden opportunity for the working class Americans without a four-year college degree who tend to work in blue-collar and service industries such as construction and retail. Though partisan control of Congress and the presidency will keep the government divided, theres a possibility that initiatives like pro-union policies and infrastructure spending might reach a bipartisan consensus.

Encouraged by their gains among Hispanic voters and their continued strength among Americans without a college degree, Republicans are eager to rebrand themselves as, in the words of Sen. Marco Rubio, a multiethnic, multiracial, working-class coalition. Meanwhile, establishment Democrats, including President-elect Joe Biden, will need to fend off a vigorous challenge from a socialist wing of the party thats intent on displacing them. That will probably require economically focused policies.

Republican skepticism of government benefits will keep some ideas off limits, such as national health insurance, which would remove a huge source of risk from Americans lives. But policies that emphasize the value of work something conservatives and liberals have both traditionally valued have a better shot.

One surprising example is pro-union policies. Although unions were traditionally a Democratic constituency, they developed into a bulwark against radical leftism. More than a century ago, American Federation of Labor founder Samuel Gompers told socialists:

I am not only at variance with your doctrines, but with your philosophy. Economically, you are unsound; socially, you are wrong; industrially, you are an impossibility.

Private-sector unions have been declining for decades in the U.S.

As former Assistant Labor Secretary Martin Manley has noted, the biggest reason for the decline is the fact that U.S. unions are forced to organize shop by shop. This not only vastly increases the amount of time and money that unions have to spend organizing, it also puts any establishment that unionizes before its competitors at a distinct competitive disadvantage.

The solution, as many labor advocates have noted, is sectoral bargaining. Under this system, all of the establishments in a certain industry within a certain area for example, all the fast-food restaurants in Jacksonville, Florida have to abide by the wages and other labor standards determined in a single negotiation. This can be handled by extending union-negotiated labor standards to nonunion workers, as in France, or by using wage boards, as in Australia. Either way, sectoral bargaining means that no business has to fear that union contracts will allow their competitors to muscle them out of the market. It would be especially beneficial for beleaguered U.S. service sector workers, who form a large and increasing percent of the countrys workforce:

Sectoral bargaining was floated by centrist Democratic candidate Pete Buttigieg during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary. But it has also received support from Michael Lind, who writes for the conservative think tank American Compass. So bipartisan interest exists.

A second potential area of cooperation is in infrastructure. Under Trump, infrastructure week became a famous joke, as the President refused to follow up on one of his signature pledges from his 2016 campaign. But the fact remains that U.S. infrastructure needs upgrading, and that this would provide a bonanza of jobs in construction and other blue-collar occupations.

Repairing the countrys extensive road network is obviously one priority. But there are also new types of infrastructure that the country needs. One of these is rural broadband. Currently, the economics often dont favor extending cable lines, fiber or other broadband lines to sparsely populated, low-income areas. But just as rural electrification allowed new towns to develop and thrive away from existing metropolises, rural broadband might allow small towns in declining regions to grow and thrive. And laying those cables and fibers will mean blue-collar jobs.

But even rural broadband pales in comparison to the building of a new electrical grid. As the fossil fuel age rapidly transitions to the age of solar and wind energy, the U.S. will need ways to relocate electric power from place to place depending on where the sun is shining or the wind is blowing. A new national power grid can do that. Even local modernized grids can help a lot. And while the private sector can do much of this work, big government spending will be needed as well. The Department of Energy estimates that the build-out of this electrical infrastructure would create hundreds of thousands of jobs, most of them blue-collar, and many of them permanent.

Republicans have traditionally been shy about opening the federal purse-strings for such monumental spending sprees, but this time might be different. Former Gov. John Kasich, a Republican, recently offered rural broadband as an alternative to socialism, and a modernized electrical grid might be sold the same way.

So the time may be right for government policies that boost jobs and reward work more highly. Unions and infrastructure dont exactly fulfill the small-government libertarian dreams of previous decades, but they could represent a centrist alternative to the growing popularity of socialism and one that helps Republicans burnish their credentials with the working class they now claim to represent.

Noah Smith is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. He was an assistant professor of finance at Stony Brook University, and he blogs at Noahpinion.

PHOTO GALLERY (CLICK TO ENLARGE)

Read the original here:
In the U.S., socialism isn't the way to win the working class - The Japan Times