By Brigitte L. Nacos
When activists of the Netroots Nation met the other day in New Orleans to discuss their strategies for the 2018 mid-term and the 2020 presidential elections, they heard from several potential presidential contenders of the Democratic Party—among them Senators Cory Booker, Kamala Harris, and Elizabeth Warren. But it was Cynthia Nixon, a challenger of New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s reelection bid from the left, who addressed the controversial “s” word for socialist.
Nixon appealed to the progressive crowd not to shy away from the “democratic socialist” label or their agenda. “Republicans call us socialists no matter what,” she said.
The problem is, however, that the devil is in the name. And the “s” word for socialist does not sit well with Democrats and Independents either. While most Americans would be hard pressed to define the term, there is no love lost when it comes to socialism that tends to be equated with communism.
So, progressive leaders from Bernie Sanders to Cynthia Nixon and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and progressive activists everywhere drop the label “socialism” and replace it with a more benign and actually more fitting “s” word --social.
Call yourself Social Democrats, call your agenda social, call your distinct partisan wing “Social Democrats of America” (different from your current name Democratic Socialists of America).
Your agenda is social—health care and education for all, living wages, environmental protection, human rights for asylum seekers and immigrants, and so much more of what you find in Western Europe’s comparable democracies. Most, if not all of what Progressives here fight for has long been adopted in EU countries—most of all a social safety net for everyone.
So, again, the devil is in the name. Keep the letter “s” but change the word to social!
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