TRUMP IS SECRETLY WORRIED THE KIDS LOVE SOCIALISM
On the stump, Trump claims that socialism would turn America into Venezuela. In private, he reportedly fears its appeal.
BY TINA NGUYEN
SEPTEMBER 9, 2019
In public, Donald Trump and the Republican Party have been throwing around the term socialism as if it were electoral kryptonite. There was Trumps op-ed of open-borders socialism, the State of the Union address in which he trashed socialism for an applause line, and seized on the economic collapse of Venezuela as evidence that the politics of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez would turn America into a car-less, childless, hamburger-bereft future.
In private, however, Trump apparently fears that this socialism thing could have legs. The Daily Beast reports that the president has been privately telling confidants for months that progressive, populist-tinged proposals like student-loan forgiveness and Medicare for Allor, as he allegedly calls it, free stuffcould threaten his prospects in 2020, and that running against socialism might get tricky:
According to a person who was in the room, Trump told donors at a recent private event that though a lot of people think itll be easy to beat [in 2020], the truth is, it might not be so easy. The president, according to the source, said that you can have someone who loves Trump, but many people love free stuff, too. He added that if candidates tell Americans, especially young votersthat theyre going to cancel their debt, thats a tough one to run against.
It might be an uphill battleespecially with younger voters who dont remember the Cold War. According to a poll from PRRI, 54% of Americans view socialism as a benevolent government that provides citizens with health insurance, retirement support, and access to free higher education, while only 43% said that a socialist government controls key parts of the economy, such as utilities, transportation, and communications industries. Millennials, after all, are more likely to associate socialism with Nordic paradises like Sweden than secret police and gulags. In a Gallup survey earlier this year, 58% of younger voters, ages 18 to 34, said that socialism was good [for] the country. They were also generally in favor of what Trump might define as free stuff: 60% wanted government-run health care, and 57% wanted the government to take responsibility for higher education.
More:
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/09/donald-trump-socialism-2020
CentralMass
(15,265 posts)msongs
(67,539 posts)NotHardly
(1,062 posts)These are like literally things that our government use to do at the local, state, and federal level until they started selling such things off to their closest friend/relative and called it the "business model of government" under which we continue to get screwed without getting kissed first.
JHB
(37,170 posts)...and have an echo chamber to normalize what used to be a rich crackpot view, don't be so surprised when people who don't dislike the same things you do start thinking "socialism" is just fine.
sharedvalues
(6,916 posts)Initech
(100,170 posts)Or 5 months pregnancy leave? I fail to see the downside of any of these things!
BeckyDem
(8,361 posts)That is what defines them, they love their FREE STUFF. Greedy bastards, call them by their proper names.
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