Billionaire Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg blasted the hypocrisy of socialist Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) on Wednesday during NBC&#8217;s presidential debate by pointing out how Sanders is a millionaire who owns three homes.
&#8220;What a wonderful country we have,&#8221; Bloomberg said. &#8220;The best known socialist happens to be a millionaire with three houses. What&#8217;d I miss here?&#8221;
&#8220;You&#8217;ll miss that I work in Washington,&#8221; Sanders responded.
&#8220;That&#8217;s the first problem,&#8221; Bloomberg fired back.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Aww, snap. Bloomberg&#39;s best moment calling out socialist Bernie&#39;s three houses. <a href="https://t.co/ncKxkQqSUg">pic.twitter.com/ncKxkQqSUg</a>
&mdash; Scott Whitlock (@ScottJW) <a href="https://twitter.com/ScottJW/status/1230333791195009025?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 20, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The exchange started several minutes prior when MSNBC&#8217;s Chuck Todd asked Bloomberg, &#8220;Mayor Bloomberg, should you exist?&#8221;
&#8220;I can&#8217;t speak for all billionaires, all I know is I&#8217;ve been very lucky, made a lot of money and I&#8217;m giving it all away to make this country better and a good chunk of it goes to the Democratic Party as well,&#8221; Bloomberg said.
&#8220;Have you earned too much?&#8221; Todd asked. &#8220;Has it been an obscene amount of money? Should you have earned that amount of money?&#8221;
&#8220;Yes, I worked very hard for it,&#8221; Bloomberg responded. &#8220;And I&#8217;m giving it away.&#8221;
Sanders responded by claiming that Bloomberg did not make all that money and that it was his workers who made him the money.
&#8220;I can&#8217;t think of a way that would make it easier for Donald Trump to get re-elected than by listening to this conversation,&#8221; Bloomberg responded. &#8220;This is ridiculous. We&#8217;re not going to throw out capitalism, we tried that, other countries tried that, it was called communism and it just didn&#8217;t work.&#8221;
WATCH:
<iframe title="Democrat debate" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Iz-aZIulRmE?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
The Daily Wire reported the following on Michael Bloomberg&#8217;s background and policy views last December after he declared his candidacy:
<blockquote>On November 24, 2019, Michael Rubens Bloomberg announced his formal entrance into the Democratic Party’s 2020 presidential primary. To date, he is the latest candidate to enter the primary field. 
Michael Bloomberg served three full terms as mayor of New York City, from 2002 through the end of 2013. He was New York City’s mayoral successor of the failed 2008 Republican presidential candidate and current private attorney for President Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani. Bloomberg is also the co-founder, CEO, and majority owner of financial services conglomerate Bloomberg L.P., which is perhaps best known for its flagship Bloomberg Terminal hardware. As of November 2019, Bloomberg’s net worth was <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/michael-bloomberg">estimated</a> at $58 billion dollars, which makes him one of the wealthiest individuals in the world. He has been a prolific donator to various charitable and political causes.
Born in Boston in 1942, Bloomberg has degrees from Johns Hopkins University and Harvard Business School. A registered Democrat earlier in his career, Bloomberg actually ran for and successfully sought the New York City mayoralty office as a registered Republican before re-registering as an independent in the midst of his second mayoral term. He re-registered as a Democrat in 2018. Since joining the 2020 Democratic Party presidential primary field, Bloomberg News — an international news outlet operating as a legal subsidiary of Bloomberg L.P. — has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bloomberg-news-wont-investigate-bloomberg-democrats-its-journalists-go-to-work-on-bloombergs-campaign">announced</a> that it will not journalistically investigate Bloomberg or his fellow 2020 Democratic Party primary campaign rivals.</blockquote>
Continue reading Bloomberg&#8217;s profile <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/where-does-michael-bloomberg-stand-on-the-issues-heres-everything-you-need-to-know">here</a>.

Democratic Presidential Candidates Debate In Las Vegas Ahead Of Nevada Caucuses

Bloomberg Nails ‘Socialist’ Bernie: You’re ‘A Millionaire With 3 Houses’

Bernie Sanders

Michael Bloomberg

Socialism

With the success of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come the rise in notoriety and popularity of so-called Democratic Socialism in the United States.
According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 43% of Americans said that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” for the United States. Regardless of whether or not Americans fully understand what “socialism” means, they appear to support it in some way nonetheless.
Because of this development, I thought it would be vital to speak with Swedish author Johan Norberg, an historian of ideas and CATO Institute fellow, who has written such books as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XOZ612/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&amp;btkr=1">In Defense of Global Capitalism</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Progress-Reasons-Look-Forward-Future-ebook/dp/B06XRXM6CV/ref=pd_sim_351_1/131-1837604-6179500?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_i=B06XRXM6CV&amp;pd_rd_r=a12d6166-914b-4e62-8b4d-1740b7135366&amp;pd_rd_w=Kb9sj&amp;pd_rd_wg=8EbMt&amp;pf_rd_p=65e3eab0-d81f-4a76-93ff-f0b7b1d6cd3d&amp;pf_rd_r=CF7BWNGM5EXJS4Q655T1&amp;psc=1&amp;refRID=CF7BWNGM5EXJS4Q655T1">Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future</a>,” among others.
His documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” hit the airwaves in 2018, and can be rented or purchased on Amazon and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/sweden-lessons-for-america/id1455593303">iTunes</a>, and can be viewed for free on <a href="https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ">YouTube</a>.
In part one of this two-part interview, which can be read <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-swedish-author-johan-norberg-on-the-devastating-impact-of-socialism-and-what-it-could-cost-the-u-s">here</a>, Norberg talked about socialism as a philosophy, the rise and fall of Sweden due to its experimentation with socialist ideas, the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what that means for the United States, and how even voluntary “libertarian” experiments in socialism have failed.
In part two of this interview, Norberg discusses the essentially non-existent distinction between “socialism” and “democratic socialism,” polls suggesting that 43% of American voters are amenable to socialism, how Sweden turned things around, how capitalism hasn’t “failed” as many socialists suggest, and more.
<blockquote>DW: Sen. Bernie Sanders says that he’s not a “socialist,” but a “Democratic socialist,” and that they are not the same thing. Can you speak to that?
NORBERG: When it comes to democratic socialism, it really means socialism. The point is not which means to you use to enforce it and implement it on everybody. If you&#8217;re saying that you will go in there and socialize people&#8217;s abilities and innovations and businesses, you will destroy individualism, and you will destroy wealth. Whether you do it democratically by having a majority or by dictatorial means, that&#8217;s like the difference between murder and suicide. It&#8217;s not who does it or how many are in favor of it, it&#8217;s the result that really counts.
I think what he’s referring to is that, &#8220;Look, it&#8217;s not Venezuela or the Soviet Union. It’s Sweden and it&#8217;s Denmark.&#8221; That&#8217;s more his take on it, or that&#8217;s what he wants to be associated with nowadays, and then his problem is just that we do not recognize his ideals in any way or form whatsoever. Sweden is now lowering its corporate tax even further so that it will be lower than in the United States. I guess that&#8217;s not the direction he would take the United States.
DW: There&#8217;s a 2019 survey from Gallup that says 43% of Americans believe that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” in the United States. What does that tell you about the American voter?
NORBERG: It tells me that you&#8217;ve never experienced socialism and you don&#8217;t really know what it means. I think people believe that it means “free stuff.” And obviously, everybody wants free stuff – but I don&#8217;t think they really understand what it&#8217;s like.
If you compare this to a country where we&#8217;ve actually seen socialists in power having tried to implement similar policies, like Sweden, we would not have those polling numbers. I know there&#8217;s a poll recently where I think 10% of Swedes said that they were socialists. So, it seems like there are fewer socialists in Sweden than in the United States. If you ask our most successful social democratic prime minister of the modern era, Göran Persson, he was asked, &#8220;Are you in favor of socialism? Are you a socialist? Would you call yourself that?&#8221; He said, &#8220;No, I don&#8217;t because you get confused with too many crazy people.&#8221; And I think that&#8217;s what you get when you&#8217;ve experienced socialism. You have a more nuanced way of looking at it.
DW: Sweden pulled the reins and turn things around. With the rising tide in the United States that seems to favor socialism, or at least what they believe to be socialism, has the ship sailed on the advancement of this ideology, or is there a way to turn it around?
NORBERG: Well, as a Swede, I would have to remind you that, unfortunately, the only thing that turned it around was that the economy collapsed in Sweden. We experienced the results of socialism and that&#8217;s why it changed. But I don&#8217;t think it would necessarily have to go that far because there&#8217;s also so much information and knowledge about this. So many places where they tried, and we&#8217;ve tried, to implement policies similar to that, and we know the results. They are there if you care to just open a book or Google it. I think that&#8217;s an important task right now for those who oppose this development, to get that knowledge out there. It&#8217;s an important moment in U.S. history in that way.
DW: Have you seen a shift in attitude globally and in the United States toward socialism since 2015/2016?
NORBERG: What I&#8217;ve seen is that something happened after the financial crisis, because after 2008 or so, people began to lose their faith in the financial system, in the banks, and rightly so because they&#8217;d been awful in so many ways. I would argue, and I&#8217;ve even written a book on this subject, that this was because the government really pushed everybody in that direction by an excess of liquidity, and at the same time, a promise of bailouts if they made stupid mistakes. Then of course you take stupid risks because heads you win, tails the taxpayer loses.
Unfortunately, what often happens after recessions, and especially the financial crisis, is that people begin to lose their faith in it and begin to think that the government should step in to a larger degree. I think this was the pivotal thing that made people begin to think that they could experiment with anticapitalist ideas.
DW: Proponents of socialism or socialistic ideology will claim that the United States is an example of “failed capitalism.” They will point to the wealth gap or to the way corporations operate in certain ways, and claim that we need to go in a new direction. What would you say to that?
NORBERG: The system isn&#8217;t broken. American capitalism is not broken. If you look at the kinds of benefits it’s creating for people, for consumers, for workers, and for retirees who have their money invested in businesses, it keeps delivering.
There&#8217;s this narrative saying that the American worker is getting a raw deal over the last decade, and you look at the headline numbers like, &#8220;Hourly wages have only increased by 5% since 1970,” and it&#8217;s a completely distorted number. It doesn&#8217;t include all the non-monitored benefits that we&#8217;re getting to a larger extent now, for tax purposes and because workers demanded to take a particular job, like health insurance, pension contributions, paid leave, vacation, etc.
If you include that, it&#8217;s not a 5% increase in hourly wages since 1970, it&#8217;s 66%.
That&#8217;s a bit of a difference and it&#8217;s pretty good – and that doesn&#8217;t even capture the most important thing, namely, the reduction in price of all the goods and services that we buy on the market, which increases our purchasing power to a larger degree. So, that&#8217;s the first thing that has to be mentioned. It keeps on delivering. Don’t take this for granted because that doesn&#8217;t happen in every place around the world.
The other thing I would say is that there are things that are broken. There are sections of the economy that definitely don’t work. In the U.S., we&#8217;ve failed in getting people who&#8217;ve lost their jobs into new jobs; we have a housing market that&#8217;s completely broken, etc. But when you examine those things, in every case, the problem is not that people acting in their own best interest on the market have failed, it is that the government has stepped in and stopped them from doing that.
When it comes to the housing market, it&#8217;s a perfect correlation between the places blocking new construction and the zoning laws and all those things that make it impossible to move to the places where the jobs are being created.
Occupational licensing is another one of the major problems, especially coming from Sweden, where we don&#8217;t do stuff like that. I&#8217;m appalled to see how it can take months, even years to get an education for a simple job that&#8217;s traditionally considered low-skill in many ways – and this is just to protect those who already have the jobs. Even worse, when they are not coordinated across state borders, it means that if you lose your job as a plumber or a barber in one state, you can&#8217;t move over the state border and take a similar job without going through the efforts, the costs, and the time to get a new license like that.
We need to look seriously at what the government does to hurt us before we start saying that the government should do even more.
DW: Is there anything that we haven&#8217;t mentioned on this subject that you want our readers or the general voting public to know?
NORBERG: I&#8217;ve noticed that one of the more popular suggestions by the left-wing of the Democratic Party is some sort of wealth tax, and it’s important to mention that we&#8217;ve abolished that in Nordic countries – in Denmark as early as 1997, and in Sweden in 2007. It wasn&#8217;t a tax on rich people because the rich people always find a place to stuff their assets or move somewhere else. It was a tax on investing in Sweden. It was a tax on creating new businesses and jobs. We benefited tremendously by abolishing the wealth tax because suddenly people felt free to create fortunes and moved to Sweden again. So it’s also worthwhile for people to look at the experience of European countries who experimented with the ideas that are now on offer in the United States.</blockquote>
I’d like to thank Johan Norberg for taking the time to speak with me about such an increasingly important topic. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/johanknorberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>, or visit his <a href="http://www.johannorberg.net/">official website</a>.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-part-i-swedish-author-johan-norberg-on-the-devastating-impact-of-socialism-and-what-it-could-cost-the-u-s">INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.</a>

Johan Norberg

INTERVIEW (Part II): Swedish Author Johan Norberg Talks The Destruction Of Socialism, How Sweden Turned It Around, And More

Democratic Socialism

Economics

Sweden

The far-left, borderline socialist Mayor of New York City, Bill de Blasio, has endorsed the openly socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) for the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
According to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/14/politics/bill-de-blasio-endorsement-bernie-sanders/index.html">CNN</a>, the New York mayor will be campaigning with Sanders in Nevada prior to the state&#8217;s caucuses next week, joining the socialist at a rally in Carson City on Sunday. In a statement on Friday, Sanders praised de Blasio for understanding that the &#8220;only way&#8221; to defeat President Trump is to hammer an agenda that helps working families.
&#8220;Mayor Bill de Blasio knows that the only way we can defeat Donald Trump is by uniting people from all backgrounds around an agenda that speaks to the needs of working families,&#8221; Sanders said in a statement to CNN. &#8220;Jane and I grew up in Brooklyn, and we are so proud to have the support of a New York City mayor fighting every day to improve the lives of New Yorkers. Bill is a leading example of what bringing the Democratic Party together around so-called &#8216;radical ideas&#8217; like universal pre-K, paid family and sick leave, and defending immigrant neighbors can do for our country.&#8221;
With the endorsement of de Blasio, Sanders has all-but-shored up his support from the Democratic Party&#8217;s far-left progressive base, which began in October 2019 when Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) endorsed him over Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and former Vice President Joe Biden.
&#8220;I have grown to appreciate the enormous consistent and nonstop advocacy of Sen. Bernie Sanders,&#8221; said AOC.
Far-left documentary filmmaker Michael Moore also endorsed Bernie Sanders at the same rally, bashing the out-of-date politics of yesteryear.
“They are doing everything they can to throw everything they can come up with to get people to think differently about Bernie,” Moore <a href="https://deadline.com/2019/10/michael-moore-endorses-bernie-sanders-saying-for-2020-1202764460/">told the crowd</a>. “So what do they say? Bernie’s too old. Yeah. Well, here’s what’s too old. The electoral college is too old. That’s what’s too old. A $7.25 minimum wage. That’s too old. Women not being paid the same as men. That’s too old. Thousands and thousands of dollars of student debt. What is that? Too old.”
“It’s actually a gift that we have a 78-year-old American running for president of the United States,” he continued. “Bernie has seen the things many of us have never seen – a pay raise! How about that?”
As <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-national-poll-gives-bernie-sanders-double-digit-lead">reported</a> by The Daily Wire&#8217;s Ashe Schow, Bernie Sanders is well on his way to securing the Democratic nomination, with one major national poll putting him ahead of his competitors by double-digits.
<blockquote>A new Morning Consult <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2020/02/13/sanders-cements-front-runner-status-after-new-hampshire-win/">poll</a> found Sanders now has a 10-point lead over his closest challenger, former Vice President Joe Biden. Biden has obtained only six delegates so far in the primary.
“The latest <a href="https://morningconsult.com/2020/02/13/sanders-cements-front-runner-status-after-new-hampshire-win/">Morning Consult poll</a> finds Sanders at 29 percent support, followed by former Vice President Joe Biden at 19 percent and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg at 18 percent. Sanders gained 3 points in the poll after winning the New Hampshire primary this week, while Biden lost 3 points after a disastrous fifth-place showing,” The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/482969-sanders-builds-double-digit-national-lead-poll?amp">reported</a>.
The outlet noted also that Sanders received more votes in the Iowa caucuses while receiving one less delegate than Buttigieg – a microcosm of the Democrats’ complaints about the national popular vote vs. the Electoral College.</blockquote>
Establishment Democrats have increasingly grown anxious over the prospect of a Bernie Sanders candidacy, fearing that his extremism could secure President Trump an easy victory. Longtime Democratic strategist James Carville has openly worried if the party has gone too far.
“We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,” <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/top-democrat-strategist-james-carville-on-2020-elections-were-losing-our-damn-minds-people-dont-want-to-hear-this-st">Carville said</a>. “They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments – talking about that is not how you win a national election.”

BlasingBernie

Shocker: Far-Left New York Mayor Bill De Blasio Endorses Socialist Bernie Sanders

2020 Election

Bill de Blasio

Democratic Party

With the success of 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and rival Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) has come the rise in notoriety and popularity of so-called Democratic socialism in the United States.
According to a 2019 Gallup survey, 43% of Americans said that “some form of socialism [would] be a good thing” for the United States. Regardless of whether or not Americans fully understand what “socialism” means, they appear to support it in some way nonetheless.
Because of this development, I thought it would be vital to speak with Swedish author Johan Norberg, an historian of ideas and CATO Institute fellow, who has written such books as “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004XOZ612/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i1">In Defense of Global Capitalism</a>” and “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06XRXM6CV/ref=dbs_a_def_awm_hsch_vapi_tkin_p1_i0">Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future</a>,” among others.
His documentary film, “Sweden, Lessons for America?” hit the airwaves in 2018, and can be rented or purchased on <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Sweden-Lessons-America-Johan-Norberg/dp/B07HP1YGX8/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=sweden+lessons+for+america&amp;psr=EVGR%7CPBPE%7CPSEL&amp;qid=1581840519&amp;s=prime-exclusive&amp;sr=8-1">Amazon</a> and <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/sweden-lessons-for-america/id1455593303">iTunes</a>, and is available for free on <a href="https://youtu.be/jq3vVbdgMuQ">YouTube</a>.
In part one of this two-part interview, Norberg discusses socialism as a philosophy, the rise and fall of Sweden due to its experimentation with socialist ideas, the popularity of Sen. Bernie Sanders and what that means for the United States, and how even voluntary “libertarian” experiments in socialism have failed.
<blockquote>DW: There are a lot of people who cite the so-called “Nordic model” when advocating for socialism or “democratic socialism.” Is Sweden a socialist nation? And if it&#8217;s not, why do people seem to think it is?
NORBERG: Well, for some reason when I describe Sweden and Swedish policies to American socialists, they hate it; they seem to think that it&#8217;s awful. It&#8217;s a model not just based on an economy of private property and private enterprise, but also specifically, when you look at the business climate, we have low corporate taxes, we have free trade, we have, in many areas I would say, less regulation of business than the United States. We don&#8217;t have the kind of occupational licensing requirements that you do. In many of those areas, we are more fiercely capitalist than the United States. And those don’t seem to be the policies that the [Sen. Bernie] Sanders supporters are in favor of.
And if you also think about the kind of reforms that we&#8217;ve put in place since the 1990s – we&#8217;ve reformed social security, partially privatized it; we’ve opened up the public sector to competition and to freedom of choice; we have a national school voucher system – many different things to encourage dynamism and market forces. And that seems to be the total opposite of what any socialist that I&#8217;ve met is in favor of.
DW: Can you give me the abridged version of what happened in Sweden with the accumulation of wealth, the implementation of socialism, and then the realization that such ideas were not working?
NORBERG: Sure. We have to go back to that because this is the one story that people have forgotten. Their perception of Sweden is in many ways stuck in the 1970s and 1980s. That’s what they remember. This was the brief interlude in Swedish history when we really did experiment with socialist ideals. The background was that we had already made ourselves one of the richest countries on the planet, so we had a lot of money to redistribute. But, that was based on a different model. All that wealth was produced in an incredibly open economic model with a very limited government. Up until the early 1960s, Sweden had lower taxes than not just other European countries, but also lower taxes than the United States. That was the model that gave us all the wealth.
At that point, Swedish socialists and politicians said, &#8220;Let&#8217;s just redistribute this. We&#8217;ve got all of this wealth, so we don&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore.&#8221; And that&#8217;s the moment in time when they doubled the size of government, and jacked up all the taxes, and regulated the labor markets. The problem was that while you can go for some time with the accumulated wealth of yesteryear, eventually, you run out of it. At the beginning of the 1970s, we were 10% richer than other industrialized economies. 25 years later, we were 10% poorer than they were.
So almost at the exact moment when we began to grow the size of government, we began to lag behind all the other economies, and it was really the “Atlas Shrugged” moment in Swedish history because businesses left, entrepreneurs, innovators, our IKEAs and Tetra Paks, our great inventors and sportsman left Sweden because it wasn&#8217;t a hospitable climate for innovation and for starting businesses anymore. It all ended in a terrible crisis in the early 1990s, and that was the moment in time when everybody from the Left to the Right said, &#8220;This is all over. We can&#8217;t do this. We have to reform our systems and get back to the future, to get back to growth.&#8221;
DW: Proponents of socialism will tell you that the ideology works in concept, but simply hasn&#8217;t been implemented correctly. They&#8217;ll set aside Venezuela, which they once championed as a socialist success story, as having been corrupted. What&#8217;s the reality there? Why hasn&#8217;t socialism ever succeeded?
NORBERG: Well, it&#8217;s interesting because they always adore the policies. It&#8217;s just that they don&#8217;t like the outcomes and the results, the consequences. Socialists in Sweden and in the United States adored Venezuelan policies until it destroyed the economy, and had GDP per capita collapse by more than 60%, and people began to starve. At that point they said, &#8220;It&#8217;s not real socialism.&#8221;
So, apparently their definition is not just some kind of socialist policy, but it also has to turn out well – and in that case, they&#8217;re right because it has never been implemented anywhere with good results.
What they did was that they started to regulate the economy in a real way, in a socialist way, that Sweden never did. They began to take over private businesses. They began with drastic price controls because they thought that this was the way to give people cheap bread. But obviously, the result was, as it is everywhere where such things are being implemented, that farmers stopped producing food, and instead, they sell it on the black markets, and they smuggle it out of the country because they can&#8217;t make a living with those kinds of price controls.
They took all the capital, some of which they got because of the price increases in oil (some $1,000 billion over ten years), which could be used to invest in the country, it was all taken by the government to give to their supporters, some for programs and policies, but most of all just wasted in corruption and other stuff, which meant that they didn&#8217;t even invest in the future of the oil industry. So, the output grows smaller and smaller all the time. The moment when prices began to come down to normal levels, they couldn&#8217;t sustain anything anymore, and it all collapsed tremendously – and we all knew this. We could all see this because those policies on socializing businesses and implementing price controls, wasting capital rather than investing it, always ends up in tears – but socialists loved it until they noticed that people began to starve.
DW: What&#8217;s your opinion of socialism as a philosophical concept, and as a form of government?
NORBERG: Lots of people say that the ideas of socialism are wonderful, it’s just that the means were too brutal and awful, and the means corrupted the ends in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and Venezuela. Therefore, it collapsed. I would say it is the other way around. It&#8217;s the complete opposite. The problem is that socialism goes against human nature. It is the total opposite of any kind of system of human morality, and that’s why they always end up with walls and barbed wire and machine guns because that&#8217;s the only way to force people to do it. We know this because we&#8217;ve seen so many different experiments with socialism – even libertarian voluntary forms of socialism, like the kibbutz in Israel for example, and they were done by idealists.
No one was forced to work collectively. From each according to his ability, to each according to their needs – but it didn&#8217;t even work there. What happened was that people didn&#8217;t want that regimentation, that kind of collective ownership. People began to demand to do things in different ways and own stuff. They began to realize that when everything was in common, they began to waste stuff. People kept the light up and the heat during night when they didn&#8217;t need it because they didn&#8217;t have to pay market prices. People took their pets to the dining room because food was free. So people began to demand this kind of freedom, and when it came to work, what happened was that as one of the kibbutzim pioneers said, &#8220;It became a paradise for parasites” because if you don&#8217;t get your wage according to what you&#8217;ve done, the effort you put into it, why bother? Why do you ever work at all, in that case?
People of talent then began to leave the kibbutz.
The thing is, had this been Eastern Germany or Venezuela or the Soviet Union, they saw the same thing, and forced people to work, not for gain of a profit, but for the government, they had to force them. They brought out the machine guns. And if people wanted to leave for another place, they built the walls and they killed people who did it. So, it&#8217;s really that the brutal ends were a result of the whole system going so much against the human nature of people who want some freedom, who want some individual responsibility, and who want to gain according to what they do rather than what the governments tell them.
That&#8217;s a very long way of answering the question, but I think that&#8217;s important for the philosophical part of it. It&#8217;s not that the means corrupted the ends. It&#8217;s that the ends would never work, and that&#8217;s why they needed brutal means.
DW: One of the current front-runners in the Democratic primary race is a self-proclaimed socialist. What does that tell you about the political climate in the United States?
NORBERG: Well, it tells you that you should be worried about the state of political discourse in the United States, and I recognize this because this was where Sweden was in the 1970s. We had this tremendous growth; we had big, successful companies bringing in the money and the profits to the economy; and we thought two things: We thought that we were on top of the world and we could do anything. We didn&#8217;t have to care about economic orthodoxy anymore. But also, people began to say, &#8220;Well, that&#8217;s unfair. Why should a little group and the few businesses make all this money? Let&#8217;s just redistribute all of this.&#8221;
And especially, I think, if you are young, if you&#8217;re a student, if you haven&#8217;t been actively involved in working to sustain yourself to a large extent or never been involved in business, you&#8217;re used to the money just being there for you, and you also notice all these definite problems and inequalities in the world, and you just think, &#8220;Well, all the money&#8217;s there. Let&#8217;s just do something about it.&#8221; And you forget that, no, the money isn&#8217;t “just there.” We have to create it every minute, all the time, constantly, and the worse we make the situation for those who create that wealth, the less we will get in the long run. It happens again and again in human history, and often paradoxically, it happens when times are good and people think that they can do anything.</blockquote>
In part two of this interview, which will be released on Saturday, Norberg discusses the essentially non-existent distinction between “socialism” and “democratic socialism,” polls suggesting that 43% of American voters are amenable to socialism, how Sweden turned things around, how capitalism hasn’t “failed” as many socialists suggest, and more.
I’d like to thank Johan Norberg for taking the time to speak with me about such an increasingly important topic. For more information, you can follow him on <a href="https://twitter.com/johanknorberg?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor">Twitter</a>, or visit his <a href="http://www.johannorberg.net/">official website</a>.

INTERVIEW (Part I): Swedish Author Johan Norberg On The Devastating Impact Of Socialism, And What It Could Cost The U.S.

Communism

As Soviet Union-honeymooning, Sandinista-supporting, Fidel Castro-praising, full-on socialist loon bag Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) emerges as the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/who-will-win-democratic-primary-latest-2020-josh-hammer">undisputed front runner</a> for the Democratic Party&#8217;s 2020 presidential nomination, it nonetheless seems that the median American is rather lukewarm about the possibility of supporting someone for the presidency who holds such historically fringe views.
According to a Gallup <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/285563/socialism-atheism-political-liabilities.aspx">survey</a> released yesterday, &#8220;[m]ore than 90% of Americans say they would be happy to vote for a presidential candidate their party nominated who would be black, Catholic, Hispanic, Jewish or a woman; 80% would accept evangelical Christians, homosexual men, and lesbians; 60-70% are willing to embrace a presidential candidate who is under 40, over 70, a Muslim or an atheist; but only 45% say they would vote for a socialist for president,&#8221; the Jewish Press <a href="https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/gallup-90-of-americans-would-vote-for-jewish-black-catholic-hispanic-woman-candidates-but-not-for-a-socialist/2020/02/12/">summarized</a>.
&#8220;Gallup’s bottom line conclusion is: The self-declared socialist Sanders could count on 76% of Democratic voters, 45% of Independents and &#8230;  only 17% of Republicans,&#8221; the Press noted.
As Gallup noted at the top of its report, socialists are the &#8220;one group tested&#8221; who &#8220;receive[] majority opposition.&#8221; After all, &#8220;[l]ess than half of Americans, 45%, say they would vote for a socialist for president, while 53% say they would not.&#8221;
The is fairly brutal news for the Democratic National Committee (DNC), and it goes a long way toward explaining why various levers of the DNC&#8217;s broader party apparatus have recently sounded the alarm about a possible Sanders nomination.
“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party. That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. … So I am scared to death, I really am,” former top Bill Clinton strategist James Carville said earlier this week while likening Sanders to the far-left Corbyn, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/end-of-days-carville-warns-dems-about-choosing-sanders-im-not-interested-in-being-in-a-cult">reported</a>.
“There’s a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult. I’m not interested in being in a cult. I’m 75 years old. I’m just not a very cult-y person,&#8221; Carville continued.
Similarly, former Obama-era secretary of state and failed 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry had to deny a recent report that he was considering jumping into the 2020 Democratic presidential race in a purported last-ditch attempt to stave off an impending Sanders nomination.
&#8220;NBC News reported on Sunday that Kerry &#8216;was overheard Sunday on the phone at a Des Moines hotel explaining what he would have to do to enter the presidential race amid &#8220;the possibility of Bernie Sanders taking down the Democratic Party — down whole,&#8221;&#8216;&#8221; The Daily Wire also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fing-false-john-kerry-explodes-over-report-indicating-he-may-jump-in-2020-race">noted</a> earlier this month.
Sanders has a lifelong history as a rabid socialist activist, and Paul Sperry <a href="https://nypost.com/2016/01/16/dont-be-fooled-by-bernie-sanders-hes-a-diehard-communist/">argued</a> at the New York Post in 2016 that Sanders is actually best described as a “diehard communist”:
<blockquote>In the early ’70s, Sanders helped found the Liberty Union Party, which called for the nationalization of all U.S. banks and the public takeover of all private utility companies.
After failed runs for Congress, Sanders in 1981 managed to get elected mayor of Burlington, Vermont, where he restricted property rights for landlords, set price controls and raised property taxes to pay for communal land trusts. …
In 1985, he traveled to [Nicaragua] to celebrate the rise to power of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinista government. He called it a “heroic revolution.” …
Sanders also adopted a Soviet sister city outside Moscow and honeymooned with his second wife in the USSR. He put up a Soviet flag in his office, shocking even the Birkenstock-wearing local liberals. At the time, the Evil Empire was on the march around the world, and threatening the U.S. with nuclear annihilation.
Then, in 1989, as the West was on the verge of winning the Cold War, Sanders addressed the national conference of the U.S. Peace Council — a known front for the Communist Party USA, whose members swore an oath not only to the Soviet Union but to “the triumph of Soviet power in the U.S..”</blockquote>

New Hampshire Democratic Primary Debate

Top Pollster: Only 45% Of Americans Would Vote For A Socialist For President

Elizabeth Warren

Gallup

John Kerry

Leftism

Poll

On Tuesday, MSNBC anchor Katy Tur attempted to speak to a supporter of presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), pinpointing a potential voter outside the democratic socialist&#8217;s rally.
However, the man Tur approached turned out to be a proud supporter of President Donald Trump. And when he was asked if he thought Sanders had any appeal, the Trump backer ripped apart the Left&#8217;s ideology as &#8220;anti-growth,&#8221; &#8220;anti-family,&#8221; &#8220;anti-American,&#8221; and &#8220;anti-life,&#8221; clearly surprising the MSNBC reporter.
&#8220;Can you tell us who you voted for?&#8221; asked Tur.
&#8220;Donald John Trump,&#8221; the voter proudly told the anchor.
&#8220;You voted for Donald John Trump. Look at that,&#8221; said Tur. &#8220;Bernie Sanders is not appealing to you?&#8221;
&#8220;The whole ideology would be destructive to the country,&#8221; the man replied. &#8220;It&#8217;s anti-growth. It&#8217;s anti-family. It&#8217;s anti-American. And, as a Roman Catholic, it&#8217;s anti-life.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&quot;Can you tell us who you voted for?&quot;
&quot;Donald John Trump.&quot;
&quot;Bernie is not appealing?&quot;
&quot;The whole ideology would be destructive to the country
&quot;It&#39;s anti-growth. It&#39;s anti-family. It&#39;s anti-American. And, as a Roman Catholic, it&#39;s anti-life.&quot;
Someone check on Nicole Wallace 😂 <a href="https://t.co/D9R8cRaPiy">pic.twitter.com/D9R8cRaPiy</a>
&mdash; Elizabeth Harrington (@LizRNC) <a href="https://twitter.com/LizRNC/status/1227340169201831936?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 11, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The interview wasn&#8217;t the only shocking moment for MSNBC on Tuesday, either. As noted by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-nh-dem-tells-msnbc-she-voted-for-bernie-sanders-after-network-treated-him-unfairly">The Daily Wire</a>, a Sanders backer told the network on live air that she shifted her vote to the Vermont senator because of MSNBC&#8217;s alleged biased treatment of Sanders.
“I want to say, the reason I went for Bernie is MSNBC,” the voter told MSNBC’s Ari Melber.
“I think it is completely cynical to say that he has lost 50% of his vote from the last time when there were two candidates,” the woman said. “Now there are multiple, wonderful candidates that would be great candidates and people that we could unify behind.”
“The kind of ‘Stop Bernie’ cynicism that I heard from a number of people… It made me angry, so I said, ‘Bernie’s got my vote,&#8217;” she added.
“This is such an interesting point,” Melber reacted. “What you’re saying is, and we take criticism because we’re journalists, you’re saying that hearing from people, whether it’s guests, contributors, the conversations you’ve heard, that you felt were designed to tear down Senator Sanders, actually endeared him to you.&#8221;
“Absolutely, I could have chosen several candidates, but that’s what pushed me over the edge for Bernie,” the voter answer.
President Trump dominated in New Hampshire on Tuesday, absolutely crushing past incumbent presidents&#8217; numbers in the primary by tens of thousands of votes.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
<a href="https://t.co/I0eZ9UoIQJ">pic.twitter.com/I0eZ9UoIQJ</a>
&mdash; Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1227610766662127616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Trump campaign manager Brad Parscale noted Tuesday night: “With approximately 54% of precincts reporting, President Trump has already received more votes than Presidents Barack Obama (49,080), George W. Bush (52,962) and Ronald Reagan (65,033) in their respective re-election New Hampshire Primaries.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
With approximately 54% of precincts reporting, President Trump has already received more votes than Presidents Barack Obama (49,080), George W. Bush (52,962) and Ronald Reagan (65,033) in their respective re-election New Hampshire Primaries.
&mdash; Brad Parscale &#8211; Text TRUMP to 88022 (@parscale) <a href="https://twitter.com/parscale/status/1227418569039851520?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“The Democrat story in New Hampshire is the continued dominance of big government socialist policies and the success of their standard bearer, Bernie Sanders,” Parscale said in a statement, as noted by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-releases-numbers-showing-massive-support-declares-victory-in-new-hampshire">The Daily Wire</a>.
“No matter which Democrat eventually emerges from their months-long dumpster fire of a primary process, we know the contrast will be President Trump’s record of accomplishment and optimistic view of the future versus Democrats and their socialist, job-killing agenda,&#8221; the campaign manager added.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-campaign-releases-numbers-showing-massive-support-declares-victory-in-new-hampshire">Trump Campaign Releases Numbers Showing Massive Support, Declares Victory In New Hampshire</a>
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-nh-dem-tells-msnbc-she-voted-for-bernie-sanders-after-network-treated-him-unfairly">WATCH: NH Dem Tells MSNBC She Voted For Bernie Sanders After Network Treated Him Unfairly</a>

Katy Tur

WATCH: MSNBC Tries To Speak To Bernie Supporter, Accidentally Interviews Trump Supporter Who Unloads On The Left

Donald Trump

MSNBC

It&#8217;s safe to say that James Carville is not a fan of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT).
The &#8220;Ragin&#8217; Cajun,&#8221; a longtime political strategist and former top adviser to President Bill Clinton, has been making the rounds blasting the socialist from Vermont — who polls currently show may blow away the field in the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.
Carville said Monday that if Democrats give Sanders the 2020 presidential nomination, it will be the &#8220;end of days&#8221; for the party. And he said Sanders does not have the broad appeal necessary to win the general election in November, likening him to Jeremy Corbyn, the far-left leader of Britain&#8217;s Labour Party who was crushed in a recent high-profile British election.
“The only thing, the only thing between the United States and the abyss is the Democratic Party. That’s it. If we go the way of the British Labour Party, if we nominate Jeremy Corbyn, it’s going to be the end of days. &#8230; So I am scared to death, I really am,&#8221; Carville said on MSNBC&#8217;s &#8220;Morning Joe.&#8221;
“If we lose that, we’re going to be the British Labour Party and be out in some theoretical left-wing la-la land,” Carville said.
Carville said Sanders does not appeal to black voters, whom he said are not interested in socialism, a revolution, or &#8220;all this foolishness you hear.&#8221;
And the strategist who pushed Clinton to repeat the mantra, &#8220;it&#8217;s the economy, stupid,&#8221; said Sanders&#8217; appeal to the far-left of the Democratic Party is downright cultish.
&#8220;There’s a certain part of the Democratic Party that wants us to be a cult. I’m not interested in being in a cult. I’m 75 years old. I’m just not a very cult-y person,&#8221; he said.
&#8220;Some people in this country want a revolution, they want disruption. I don&#8217;t know — they scream at people, they go and bully people. I don&#8217;t know how you win an election like that, 78 years old standing up screaming at a microphone about revolution. But you gotta&#8217; give people an alternative,&#8221; Carville said.
It&#8217;s not the first time Carville has railed about Sanders. Last week, he said, “it matters who the candidate is, it matters what a party chooses to talk about!”
“I’m 75 years old. Why am I here doing this? Because I am scared to death, that’s why! Let’s get relevant here, people, for sure. All the Sanders people are taking pictures wishing Jeremy Corbyn the best. I don’t want to go down that path!”
And in a recent interview with Vox, Carville said he was “scared to death” of the upcoming election.
“Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been. This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think?” he said.
“I’ll just say it this way: The fate of the world depends on the Democrats getting their s**t together and winning in November,” Carville said. “We have to beat Trump. And so far, I don’t like what I see. And a lot of people I talk to feel the same way.”

Politicon 2019 – Day 1

‘END OF DAYS’: Carville Warns Dems About Choosing Sanders — ‘I’m Not Interested In Being In A Cult!’

Bill Clinton

Jeremy Corbyn

Morning Joe

Progressivism

On Sunday, 2020 Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) appeared on CNN’s “State of the Union” with host Jake Tapper.
During the segment, Tapper asked Sanders about a 1974 comment in which the senator reportedly advocated for a wage cap.
<blockquote>TAPPER: Our investigative Kfile team found that early in your political career, way back in 1974, you said that it should be illegal to earn more money than someone could spend in his or her lifetime. You proposed a maximum wage cap on the highest earners.
SANDERS: What year was that?
TAPPER: It was 45 years ago.
SANDERS: Jake, in all due respect, [that was] seven years before I was [elected]. Did you go back to my third-grade essay when I was in P.S. 197 about what I said?
TAPPER: You were a grown man in your 30s.
SANDERS: Yeah, but that was 50 years ago. Let&#8217;s talk about my mayor’s record where I was a transformative mayor, re-elected three times. You know, we can go back to things that I said in the 70s. I don&#8217;t think it&#8217;s productive. I&#8217;ve been a senator for 14 years, a congressman for 16 years – but here&#8217;s the bottom line. This is what I do believe. When you have three people who own more wealth than the bottom half of America; when half of our people are living paycheck to paycheck; when 500,000 Americans are sleeping out in the street, yes, the rich have gotta pay, and the large corporations have gotta pay their fair share of taxes. We will raise taxes vary substantially on billionaires. No apologies for that.
TAPPER: But you do not favor a wage cap as you once proposed? That&#8217;s the only question.
SANDERS: 50 years ago, mmm. Look, what I just said is when you have massive levels of income and wealth inequality – by the way, in the last three years under Trump, the billionaire class has seen a hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars increase in their wealth. The average American worker has seen less than a 1% increase in real wages last year. All right, that&#8217;s the issue that we’ve got to deal with right now. We need an economy that works for working people, not just for the billionaire class, which is what we have under Trump&#8217;s economy.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
Bernie Sanders fires back after Jake Tapper asks him about his backing of a wage cap in 1974 that CNN recently dug up.
&#8220;Did you go back to my third-grade essay when I was in PS 197 about what I said?&#8221; <a href="https://t.co/FYpjudY3Yu">pic.twitter.com/FYpjudY3Yu</a>
— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) <a href="https://twitter.com/justinbaragona/status/1226516385968349184?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 9, 2020</a></blockquote>
Just as Sanders did during a town hall with CNN’s Chris Cuomo in April 2019, he refused to recant his former statement, and instead, pivoted the conversation to the alleged solutions for which he is currently advocating as a Democratic presidential candidate.
Despite Tapper giving Sanders multiple chances to recant his prior statement pertaining to wage caps, the senator didn’t take the opportunity.
In the April 2019 town hall, the following eerily similar exchange took place:
<blockquote>CUOMO: You used to argue that you should have government control of the means of capitalism, energy companies, factories, banks –
SANDERS: When did I say that?
CUOMO: In the 70s.
SANDERS:  Okay, right.
CUOMO:  No, but hold on.
SANDERS: What did you say in the 70s?
CUOMO: Ga ga goo goo. What I’m saying is that you’ve changed.
SANDERS: Wait a minute. First [thought], he hears me criticizing media all the time and he gets nervous about it.
CUOMO: One of many things that makes me nervous.
SANDERS: I was a mayor of a city for eight years. Did I nationalized any of the industry in the city of Burlington, Vermont? I don’t think so. Congressman for 16 years.
Look, I said what I said, and that is, I want to live in a nation in which all people in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world can have a decent standard of living. I’m not talking about everybody owning a big, fancy house or Cadillac or anything like that, but I think we can do what other nations in the world are already doing. The ideas that I’m advocating for you tonight, you know, they’re not so radical. Health care as a right exists in virtually every other major country on Earth. Does anyone here know how much it costs to go to college in Germany? It’s free.
I once was giving a speech, Chris, and I said that in Finland, college is free, and some guy jumped up, and said, “I’m from Finland. You’re wrong. It’s not free.” … He said they pay us to go to college. So, these ideas about guaranteeing economic rights to working people rather than seeing in New Hampshire and in Vermont, and all over this country, people working two or three jobs, for $8 or $9 an hour, living under great stress, not having time for their kids, marriages dissolving as a result. Yeah, that’s what I believe. I believe in a nation in which we guarantee fundamental economic rights, basic necessities of life to all of our people.</blockquote>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a0JxEdzMiJA" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
As The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-van-jones-claims-young-sanders-supporters-arent-really-socialist-policies-actually-pretty-reasonable">noted</a> when reporting on the April 2019 town hall, Sanders has proposed several policies that would nationalize certain industries, or portions of industries, and rack up staggering costs, which would be paid for by the American taxpayer.
Those policies include Medicare for All, which would cost an estimated $32 trillion over ten years, a Green New Deal, which could cost approximately $16.3 trillion, according to the Sanders campaign, student loan forgiveness, which would cost an estimated $1.6 trillion, and free tuition, which would cost at least $48 billion annually, according to Sanders’ own website.
Sanders even believes in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-van-jones-claims-young-sanders-supporters-arent-really-socialist-policies-actually-pretty-reasonable">public ownership</a> of utilities.
Despite a messy Iowa caucus, Sanders can claim a win, having come in a <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=iowa+caucus+results&amp;rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS876US876&amp;oq=iowa+cacus+r&amp;aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0l3.2839j0j7&amp;hl=en-US&amp;sourceid=chrome-mobile&amp;ie=UTF-8">stunningly close second place</a> with 26.1% and 12 delegates compared with rival Pete Buttigieg’s 26.2% and 14 delegates.
In New Hampshire, which holds its primary on Tuesday, Sanders leads Buttigieg 26.1% to 21.3%, according to the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/nh/new_hampshire_democratic_presidential_primary-6276.html">RealClearPolitics</a> polling average.

Sen. Bernie Sanders

WATCH: Sanders Dodges, Will Not Disavow Prior Comment On Capping Wages

On Friday night, Van Jones appeared on a CNN panel following the Democratic primary debate in New Hampshire.
When asked by anchor Chris Cuomo if Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) can “redefine” the word “socialist,” Jones replied that he’s not sure it can be done, but went on to defend Sanders’ ideology and policy as “pretty reasonable.”
<blockquote>I don’t know if he can – but I will say this. For his young supporters, they call themselves socialists, but they really just seem to have, like, grandparent envy. In other words, their grandparents get to see a doctor pretty much for free, and they want to do the same thing. When their grandparents went to college, it cost, like, $4 a semester, and they want to do the same thing. Why [do you] call yourselves socialist? You basically just say: “Grandpa and grandma, I want what you had.” The idea that this is some socialist revolution or whatever, this is not a socialist revolution of the kind that we heard about in the 60s and 70s, and I think the label does a lot of harm when the policies are actually pretty reasonable.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<a href="https://twitter.com/ChrisCuomo?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@chrisCuomo</a> &#8220;Can <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bernie?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bernie</a> redefine the word (<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Socialism?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Socialism</a>) that it works in America&#8221; <a href="https://twitter.com/VanJones68?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@VanJones68</a> &#8220;<a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bernie?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bernie</a>&#8216;s policies are pretty reasonable&#8221; 1/2 <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NHDebate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NHDebate</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/democraticdebate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#democraticdebate</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NotMeUs?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NotMeUs</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/politics?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#politics</a> <a href="https://t.co/Q7zqpUXIxy">pic.twitter.com/Q7zqpUXIxy</a>
— CaseStudyQB (@CaseStudyQB) <a href="https://twitter.com/CaseStudyQB/status/1226032686898302977?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
Cuomo then noted that during the 1970s, Sanders “did argue for state ownership of corporations and the industries of commerce.”
Cuomo said that when he brought that up during a town hall in April 2019, Sanders replied, “When did I say that?” to which Cuomo responded, “You said it in the 70s.” Then Cuomo told the panel that Sanders said, “Look, my ideas have progressed.”
That’s not exactly what happened.
During the town hall, the exchange between Cuomo and Sanders was as follows:
<blockquote>CUOMO: You were asked earlier on, as a quick follow on this, what do you feel differently about now? I was reviewing what CNN’s KFile had come up, taking a look at your evolution in politics. You used to argue that you should have government control of the means of capitalism, energy companies, factories, banks –
SANDERS: When did I say that?
CUOMO: In the 70s.
SANDERS:  Okay, right.
CUOMO:  No, but hold on.
SANDERS: What did you say in the 70s?
CUOMO: Ga ga goo goo. What I’m saying is that you’ve changed.
SANDERS: Wait a minute. First [thought], he hears me criticizing media all the time and he gets nervous about it.
CUOMO: One of many things that makes me nervous.
SANDERS: I was a mayor of a city for eight years. Did I nationalized any of the industry in the city of Burlington, Vermont? I don’t think so. Congressman for 16 years.
Look, I said what I said, and that is, I want to live in a nation in which all people in the wealthiest nation in the history of the world can have a decent standard of living. I’m not talking about everybody owning a big, fancy house or Cadillac or anything like that, but I think we can do what other nations in the world are already doing. The ideas that I’m advocating for you tonight, you know, they’re not so radical. Health care as a right exists in virtually every other major country on Earth. Does anyone here know how much it costs to go to college in Germany? It’s free.
I once was giving a speech, Chris, and I said that in Finland, college is free, and some guy jumped up, and said, “I’m from Finland. You’re wrong. It’s not free.” &#8230; He said they pay us to go to college. So, these ideas about guaranteeing economic rights to working people rather than seeing in New Hampshire and in Vermont, and all over this country, people working two or three jobs, for $8 or $9 an hour, living under great stress, not having time for their kids, marriages dissolving as a result. Yeah, that’s what I believe. I believe in a nation in which we guarantee fundamental economic rights, basic necessities of life to all of our people.</blockquote>
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/a0JxEdzMiJA" width="720" height="385" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Sanders noticeably doesn’t disavow what he said, and he doesn’t indicate a changed belief system. Instead, Sanders pivots to claiming that when he was a mayor, he didn’t act on his alleged ideology, and then goes on to describe some of the broad policy he believes in.
During the 2020 election cycle, Sanders has proposed several policies that would nationalize certain industries, or portions of industries, and rack up staggering costs, which would be paid for by the American taxpayer.
The senator wants to implement Medicare for All, which is estimated to cost approximately $32 trillion over the first decade of implementation. He wants to cancel student loan debt for the roughly 45 million borrowers at a cost of <a href="https://berniesanders.com/issues/free-college-cancel-debt/">$1.6 trillion</a>, and “provide at least $48 billion per year to eliminate tuition and fees at four-year public colleges and universities, tribal colleges, community colleges, trade schools, and apprenticeship programs.”
Sanders also wants to “end the housing crisis by investing $2.5 trillion to build nearly ten million permanently affordable housing units,” reads his campaign website.
Notably, Sanders favors the so-called <a href="https://berniesanders.com/en/issues/green-new-deal/">Green New Deal</a> (GND), which would radically transform the way we live.
On the senator’s campaign website, it <a href="https://berniesanders.com/en/issues/green-new-deal/">claims</a> that when Sanders is President, he will end “unemployment by creating 20 million jobs needed to solve the climate crisis.”
<blockquote>These jobs will be good paying, union jobs with strong benefits and safety standards in steel and auto manufacturing, construction, energy efficiency retrofitting, coding and server farms, and renewable power plants. We will also create millions of jobs in sustainable agriculture, engineering, a reimagined and expanded Civilian Conservation Corp, and preserving our public lands.</blockquote>
The website adds that the plan would include “directly invest[ing] an historic $16.3 trillion public investment toward these efforts.”
Although the details of the Green New Deal are vague, multiple organizations and individuals have attempted to ballpark the cost of the initiatives put forward in the proposal. Looking at several key aspects of the policy, the Aspen Institute <a href="https://www.aspeninstitute.org/blog-posts/how-much-will-the-green-new-deal-cost/">estimates</a> that the GND could cost somewhere between $52 trillion and $93 trillion “over the next ten years.”
[Editor’s Note: Sanders’ “Green New Deal” would allegedly cost $16.3 trillion, according to his <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/22/politics/bernie-sanders-green-new-deal-plan/index.html">campaign</a>. The Green New Deal proposed by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is what the Aspen Institute’s estimates pertain to. However, Sanders is on record supporting AOC’s Green New Deal].
According to Sanders’ website, the candidate is also interested in public ownership of utilities, as part of the GND would see a massive movement in the energy sector:
<blockquote>The renewable energy generated by the Green New Deal will be publicly owned, managed by the Federal Power Marketing Administrations, the Bureau of Reclamation and the Tennessee Valley Authority and sold to distribution utilities with a preference for public power districts, municipally- and cooperatively-owned utilities with democratic, public ownership, and other existing utilities that demonstrate a commitment to the public interest.</blockquote>
Over the decades, Sanders has praised and advocated for socialist ideology on numerous occasions, including allegedly campaigning for “the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns,” reports the <a href="https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/campaigns/bernie-sanders-campaigned-for-marxist-party-in-reagan-era">Washington Examiner</a>.
When confronted about his self-proclaimed Democratic Socialism, Sanders often invokes allegedly socialist Nordic countries in defense of his ideology.
However, as Danish economist Otto Brøns-Petersen <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/interview-danish-economist-otto-brons-petersen-on-the-myths-and-failures-of-socialism">told</a> The Daily Wire: “The Nordic countries are far from socialist. It is true that some of us have large public sectors and high taxes, but in most other respects, the Nordic countries are more free-market than even the United States. The government doesn’t own or plan the economy in the Nordic countries, and in some respects, doesn’t even regulate as much as other Western countries. There are, for instance, no minimum wage laws in Denmark.”

WATCH: Van Jones Claims ‘Young’ Sanders Supporters Aren’t Really ‘Socialist’; Policies ‘Actually Pretty Reasonable’

Green New Deal

Van Jones

If you want to understand a human being or the human condition, what is the single most important question you should ask?
Most religious people would probably ask, &#8220;Do you believe in God?&#8221;
The most important question most secular people, especially progressives, could imagine asking is probably a policy question. Today it would be &#8220;Do you support Donald Trump?&#8221; Otherwise it might be &#8220;Do you support abortion rights?&#8221; or &#8220;Do you support gay marriage?&#8221;
As important as all of these questions are, in attempting to understand human beings, especially large groups of human beings — i.e., their society — the most important question to ask is &#8220;What in life gives you the most meaning?&#8221;
The answer does not explain everything, of course, but it explains the human condition better than any other question.
The reason is this: After food, the greatest human need and human desire is meaning. Even more so than the ability to reason or even to speak, this is the great divide between human and animal. We share all other needs with the higher animal species and share many needs with some of the lower animal species. Like them, we need food, shelter and companionship. But, while human beings seek and need meaning more than anything except food (and companionship — but for human beings, companionship usually provides some meaning, and sometimes enough), no animal needs or seeks meaning. As an aside, this is one of the reasons I believe in God, the Creator. There is no evolutionary explanation for the need for meaning. Meaning is not a biological need.
Given its unique importance, that is why what gives us meaning must be deemed the most important question.
The problem, however, is that just as the need for food has no inherent moral quality, the need for meaning has no inherent moral quality. Meaning can be found in evil just as it can be found in good. Nazism provided millions of Germans with as much meaning as helping the dying in Calcutta provided Mother Teresa. Slaughtering infidels gives radical Islamic terrorists as much meaning as feeding the poor gives those who work for the Salvation Army. Killing the &#8220;Christ-killer&#8221; Jews gave some medieval Christians as much meaning as saving Jews gave some European Christians during the Holocaust.
For most Americans until the last generation, the need for meaning was filled by family, religion, community and patriotism (i.e., love of America and belief in America as Abraham Lincoln put it: as &#8220;the last best hope of earth.&#8221;)
All, or nearly all, of those sources of meaning are being lost. In fact, the present generation of Americans has few or none of those meaning providers.
As regards family, Americans are marrying at a later age than ever before. Fewer Americans are marrying than ever before. And fewer are having children than ever before.
With regard to religion, more than a third of millennials — by far the largest percentage of any generation in American history — do not identify with any religion.
As for community, a vast number of Americans — of every age — have lost ties to any community. This is a major reason for the epidemic of loneliness that afflicts so many Americans (and so many others) at the present time. For example, The New York Times reported in 2018 that in Britain, &#8220;more than nine million people in the country often or always feel lonely, according to a 2017 report published by the Jo Cox Commission on Loneliness.&#8221; Then-Prime Minister Theresa May actually appointed a minister of loneliness.
And regarding America, what is there to believe in? For more than a generation, young Americans have been taught contempt for this country: Its past is essentially racist, genocidal and imperialist. So much for patriotism.
So, then, what is to give meaning to Americans who have lost all or most of the above? Something has to, because the need for meaning is as built in and as universal as the need for food.
The answer is self-evident: Whatever it is, it must provide meaning without being dependent on family, community, religion or patriotism.
And what is that? Leftism.
All of leftism (not liberalism, which affirms all the traditional meaning providers) consists of meaning providers that replace community, religion, America and even family (single women are a major, even dominant, demographic of the left).
For leftists, feminism, environmentalism, socialism and trans rights provide meaning. The life-filling meaning of leftism is most evident in the constant leftist use of the term &#8220;existential threat.&#8221; President Donald Trump &#8220;is posing an existential threat to America,&#8221; wrote leftist Frank Rich in the latest issue of New York Magazine. &#8220;Bloomberg, in Campaign Event, Calls Trump an &#8216;Existential Threat,'&#8221; ABC News headlined two months ago. A Mother Jones headline two weeks ago read, &#8220;Trump Is an &#8216;Existential&#8217; Threat: Ilana Glazer, Eric Holder, and 2020.&#8221; A ThinkProgress headline last July read, &#8220;The Existential Threat Trump Poses to the World Political Order Is a 2020 Campaign Issue.&#8221; The Sioux City Journal headlined last week, &#8220;Biden: Trump Represents &#8216;an Existential Threat to the Future of Our Country.'&#8221;
Fighting President Trump means fighting for the very existence of the world&#8217;s order and for democracy in America. What could possibly give those devoid of meaning more meaning than that?
Well, there is one other thing: fighting for the very existence of the world itself. That is the animating impulse of the left&#8217;s obsession with global warming. &#8220;(T)he world is going to end in 12 years if we don&#8217;t address climate change,&#8221; says Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said at a recent CNN town hall that the &#8220;climate crisis&#8221; is an &#8220;existential threat to the planet.&#8221; There are as many assertions of fossil fuels posing an existential threat to Earth&#8217;s survival as there are leftists (and the many liberals who fear the left).
The proof that this alleged saving of democracy and the world from extinction are nothing more than left-wing meaning givers is this: The only communities who don&#8217;t believe this continue to possess all the traditional meaning givers. We don&#8217;t need the left&#8217;s substitutes.
Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest book, published by Regnery in May 2019, is &#8220;The Rational Bible,&#8221; a commentary on the book of Genesis. His film, &#8220;No Safe Spaces,&#8221; came to theaters fall 2019. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.

Street lights.

PRAGER: The Question That Explains Almost Everything

Environmentalism

Religion

Left-wing MSNBC host Chris Matthews exploded on the Democratic presidential candidates following Friday night&#8217;s primary debate for embracing socialism, saying, &#8220;it doesn&#8217;t frickin work!&#8221;
&#8220;&#8230;the issue of this campaign, it is that word &#8216;socialism,'&#8221; Matthews said. &#8220;Some people like it, younger people like it, those of us like me, who grew up in the Cold War and saw some aspects of it, if there visiting places like Vietnam, like I have, [and seeing countries] like Cuba, being there, I&#8217;ve seen what socialism&#8217;s like, I don&#8217;t like it, OK?&#8221; Matthews said. &#8220;It&#8217;s not only not free, it doesn&#8217;t frickin work!&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Chris Matthews laying it down.
Socialism is an issue in this campaign. 
He doesn’t like socialism and “it doesn’t frickin’ work!”
 <a href="https://t.co/gRj8GDJztn">pic.twitter.com/gRj8GDJztn</a>
&mdash; Tim Murtaugh &#8211; Text TRUMP to 88022 (@TimMurtaugh) <a href="https://twitter.com/TimMurtaugh/status/1225991770435129350?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;I think the Democratic Party has to figure out its ideology,&#8221; Matthews continued. &#8220;A lot us will be sorting things out if the Democratic Party runs a socialist candidate. That&#8217;s a change from the Democratic Party. The Democrat Party has been to the left of the Republican Party on the issue of mixed capitalism, more social programs, they push social security, Medicare, Medicaid, enormously popular programs.&#8221;
&#8220;I have my views on the word &#8216;socialist,&#8217; and I&#8217;ll be glad to share them with you in private and they go back to the early 1950s. I have an attitude about them, I remember the Cold War, I have an attitude toward Castro,&#8221; Matthews contined. &#8220;I believe if Castro and the reds had won the Cold War there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have been one of the ones getting executed and certain other people would be there cheering, OK?&#8221;
&#8220;So I have a problem with people who took the other side,&#8221; Matthews continued. &#8220;I don&#8217;t know who Bernie supports over these years. I don’t know what he means by ‘socialism.’”
“One week, it’s Denmark, we’re going to be like Denmark,” Matthews said in a voice mocking Sanders. “Okay, that’s harmless. That’s basically a capitalist country with a lot of good social welfare programs. Denmark’s harmless.”
WATCH:
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Video: Watch Chris Matthews GO OFF like a boss (no, I&#39;m not joking) about the dangers of socialism re; Bernie, the pure evil of communism, the legitimate fears of a Red Scare in the Cold War, and how &quot;there would have been executions in Central Park&quot; if they won <a href="https://t.co/2XxmZbsJTc">pic.twitter.com/2XxmZbsJTc</a>
&mdash; Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1226005638435745792?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
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<a href="https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2020/02/08/matthews-goes-evils-bernies-beloved-socialism-not-joke">TRANSCRIPT</a>:
<blockquote>CHRIS MATTHEWS: She had guts to talk about the issue of this campaign. It is that word socialism. Some people like it. Younger people like it. Those of us like me who grew up — who grew up in the Cold War and saw some aspects of it after visiting places like Vietnam like I have, seeing countries like Cuba, being there, I&#8217;ve seen what socialism is like. I don’t like it. Okay? It&#8217;s not only not free. It doesn’t freaking work. [APPLAUSE] It just doesn’t work.
&#8230;
CHRIS HAYES: I mean, his sorta response to the socialism question I basically like I don&#8217;t care what the guy says about me because he&#8217;s going to say ugly things about anyone. What do you think about it?
LAWRENCE O’DONNELL: Yeah, he — I&#8217;ve never heard actually him say this is how I&#8217;ll respond to that. He really just sort of says, as you say, basically I don&#8217;t care. He would be — if he’s the nominee — he&#8217;ll be the first socialist nominee anyone&#8217;s ever seen and so it’s a very difficult thing to predict —
HAYES: Exactly.
O’DONNELL: — how that will go. It’s coming at a point in the curve of the understanding of that word that really has never been better. This economy is filled with socialism. It&#8217;s filled with capitalism. Every economy in the world has a mix of capitalism and socialism and they vary. Sweden has more socialism than we do. North Korea has no capitalism. That’s the only place. Every other place is a mixed economy. Everybody knows that. I think everyone in this room knows that, so the word doesn&#8217;t scare people the way it did in the 1950s, 1960s and Bernie Sanders band is one of the beneficiaries and by the way, the guy who made that word less scary by embracing it and saying I — I personally am not afraid of it and so, the word is living in a different environment now and I can&#8217;t predict for you just how much of a liability that may or may not be.
MENENDEZ: I do wonder if it is going to be scary to Venezuelans and to Cubans —
HAYES: There are a lot of Floridians who are very wary of that, yeah.
MENENDEZ: — in Florida and to your point about unity, and about Sanders understanding how important it was to give that full throat call for unity, I also wondered if Pete Buttigieg does end up becoming the nominee, how, then, Sanders reconciled the attack he made tonight which is to say there are two sides. I&#8217;m on one, the mayor is on the other. Now he&#8217;s the nominee, how he then does a turnabout then to support him?
O’DONNELL: They do it every time.
HAYES: Right, that’s the other thing.
O’DONNELL: This state remembers the phrase voodoo economics.
HAYES: Yes, exactly.
O’DONNELL: The guy who accused his opponent of voodoo economics became that guy&#8217;s vice president, okay? So, there’s nothing you can&#8217;t take back when it gets to the general.
&#8230;
MATTHEWS: But I think that the Democratic Party has to figure out its ideology. In Britain, we had a Liberal Party — or when I wasn’t growing up — beginning of the last century, they were over taken by the Socialist Party. Labour became the main threat, the main challenger to the Tories, Churchill went back to the Tories. We all know that — a lot of us know that history. A lot of us will be sorting things out if the Democratic Party runs a socialist candidate. That’s a change from the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party&#8217;s been the left of the Republican Party on — the issue of mixed capitalism, more social programs. They pushed Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, enormously popular programs. I think ACA — ObamaCare has also — had wished they follow through with it and make it work. I think most Americans would be happy to have a public option and have Medicare follow through with. But I don’t want to get in — you know, I&#8217;m on every night. I&#8217;ll let the Democrats figure this out. I — I have my own views of the word socialist and I’ll be glad to tell them — share them with you in private. When they go back to the early 1950s, I have attitude about them. I remember the Cold War. I have an attitude towards Castro. I believe if Castro and the — and the Reds had won the Cold War, there would have been executions in Central Park and I might have one of the ones getting executed and certain other people would be there cheering, okay? So, I have a problem with people who took the other side. I don&#8217;t know who Bernie supports over these years. I don’t know what he means by socialism. One week it&#8217;s Denmark. We’re going to be like Denmark. Okay, that’s harmless. That’s a soc — that’s basically a capitalist country with a lot of good social welfare programs. Denmark is harmless.
HAYES: He’s pretty clearly on the Demark category.
MATTHEWS: Is he?
HAYES: Yeah.
MATTHEWS: Are you sure? How do you know who — did he tell you that?
HAYES: Well, that’s what he says and what his agenda calls for, right? He’s not calling for — I mean —
MATTHEWS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let’s see. Let&#8217;s figure that one out.
JOY REID: But we haven&#8217;t seen a campaign yet where video of him praising the other version, which is Castro, has been used.
HAYES: Right. Well, that’s —
REID: If it will be used. We haven’t seen how that plays out.
HAYES: — that’s a question of how — of how it tang — what the effect that has.
MATTHEWS: Well, what does he think of Castro? That’s a great question. What do you think of Castro? What do you think of Fidelismo? We all thought he was great when he burst — at first, I was cheering like mad for him when he first went in and then he became a communist and started shooting —
HAYES: Okay.
MATTHEWS: — every one of his enemies.
HAYES: Okay. Hold those —
MATTHEWS: So you got to make a —
HAYES: — hold those thoughts on the Cubans.
MATTHEWS: — those judgements. He’s old enough to think.
HAYES: Hold those thoughts on the Cuban revolution.</blockquote>

2017 White House Correspondents&#8217; Association Dinner &#8211; Arrivals

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews Explodes On Democrats Over Socialism: ‘It Doesn’t Frickin Work!’

Chris Matthews

democratic debate

During the ABC News Democrat debate on Friday night, only one Democrat signaled that they had a problem with a socialist becoming the party&#8217;s nominee to face President Donald Trump in November.
&#8220;Is anyone else on the stage concerned about having a democratic socialist at the top of the ticket?&#8221; ABC News host George Stephanopoulos asked.
Only Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) raised her hand indicating that she had a problem with it.
WATCH:
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Video: Here&#39;s every Democrat except <a href="https://twitter.com/amyklobuchar?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@AmyKlobuchar</a> giving their approval (through their silence) that they would be okay with the eventual Democratic nominee facing President Trump being a socialist <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/DemDebate?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#DemDebate</a> <a href="https://t.co/rD037c5lQ3">pic.twitter.com/rD037c5lQ3</a>
&mdash; Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) <a href="https://twitter.com/CurtisHouck/status/1225951502017146889?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Daily Wire Editor at Large Josh Hammer wrote an in-depth profile piece on Klobuchar last September:
<blockquote>Amy Jean Klobuchar has served since 2007 as a U.S. senator from Minnesota. Initially the state’s junior senator, Klobuchar has served as Minnesota’s senior senator since Democrat Al Franken’s controversial defeat of incumbent Republican Norm Coleman in 2008. A member of the Democratic Party — or, more specifically, the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party — Klobuchar previously served as county attorney for Hennepin County, Minnesota. Although hardly centrist by recently historical, Bill Clinton-era Democratic Party standards, Klobuchar now seeks the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination by orienting herself as centrist-inclined and possessing a vague aura of Midwestern sensibility. In current 2020 Democratic presidential nomination polling, Klobuchar currently gets national support in the low single digits.
Klobuchar, a Minnesota native, has a bachelor degree from Yale University and a law degree from the University of Chicago. Earlier in her legal career, Klobuchar worked as a corporate attorney before becoming a local prosecutor. Her name was sometimes floated as a possible U.S. Supreme Court nominee during President Barack Obama’s presidency. Klobuchar serves on the influential U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee, where her tone and demeanor during the inflammatory Brett Kavanaugh nomination saga placed her, alongside Committee member Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE), firmly on the less hysterical wing of the raucous Senate Democratic caucus. Klobuchar still voted against Kavanaugh’s nomination.
Klobuchar is married to fellow attorney and legal academic John Bessler. They have one daughter, Abigail.
Electoral History: Klobuchar first entered the public sphere in 1994, where she initially declared a run for county attorney of Hennepin County before dropping out. She successfully sought the same position in 1998, winning narrowly. In 2002, she was easily re-elected to the local prosecutor perch.
In 2006, Klobuchar announced her U.S. Senate run for the seat vacated by incumbent Sen. Mark Dayton (D-MN). She won the DFL Party primary in a landslide and easily won the general election. Klobuchar was subsequently re-elected by huge margins in both 2012 and 2018.
Klobuchar now seeks the 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination.
On The Issues: Klobuchar’s prosecutorial background, gentle public (though perhaps not private) demeanor, and background from a largely rural state combine to make her somewhat more centrist-oriented than many of her 2020 Democratic Party presidential nomination rivals. However, Klobuchar can still be fairly characterized as a full-spectrum leftist/progressive. Her 2020 presidential campaign emphasizes universal/socialized medicine and climate change, among other issues.</blockquote>
Read Hammer&#8217;s full piece on Senator Amy Klobuchar <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/where-does-amy-klobuchar-stand-issues-heres-josh-hammer">here</a>.

US-VOTE-2020-DEMOCRATS-DEBATE

WATCH: Only 1 Democrat Indicates They Have Problem With Socialist Being Nominee

Bernie Sanders.

WHITTLE: This Land Is His Land

Josef Stalin

Russia

Longtime Democratic Party strategist and top Bill Clinton ally James Carville unloaded on the Democratic Party during an interview published on Friday, saying that when it comes to the party&#8217;s ideas, the American people &#8220;don&#8217;t want to hear this s**t&#8221; and that Democrats are losing their minds over the upcoming election.
When asked by left-wing <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/7/21123518/trump-2020-election-democratic-party-james-carville">Vox</a> why he was &#8220;scared to death&#8221; of the upcoming election, Carville responded, &#8220;Look, the turnout in the Iowa caucus was below what we expected, what we wanted. Trump’s approval rating is probably as high as it’s been. This is very bad. And now it appears the party can’t even count votes. What the hell am I supposed to think?&#8221;
&#8220;I’ll just say it this way: The fate of the world depends on the Democrats getting their s**t together and winning in November,&#8221; Carville continued. &#8220;We have to beat Trump. And so far, I don’t like what I see. And a lot of people I talk to feel the same way.&#8221;
Carville said he does not know where the party went wrong, considering that it did well in House races in 2018: &#8220;Now it’s like we’re losing our damn minds.&#8221;
It&#8217;s fair to note that after the 2018 races, radical far-left Democrats like socialist Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NY), Ilhan Omar (MN), and Rashida Tlaib (MI) have driven the party increasingly to the far-left.
&#8220;We have candidates on the debate stage talking about open borders and decriminalizing illegal immigration,&#8221; Carville said. &#8220;They’re talking about doing away with nuclear energy and fracking. You’ve got Bernie Sanders talking about letting criminals and terrorists vote from jail cells. It doesn’t matter what you think about any of that, or if there are good arguments — talking about that is not how you win a national election.&#8221;
Carville said that if Sanders gets elected, &#8220;there’s no chance in hell we’ll ever win the Senate with Sanders at the top of the party defining it for the public.&#8221;
Carville then continued to repeat the lie that &#8220;18% of the country elects more than half of our senators,&#8221; a false statement that he also made on <a href="https://www.msnbc.com/the-beat-with-ari/watch/-wake-up-dem-vet-calls-for-party-to-be-more-relevant-diverse-after-iowa-chaos-78129221946">MSNBC</a>.
Newsweek <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/senators-who-voted-convict-trump-represent-18-million-more-americans-those-who-voted-acquit-1485972">reported</a> that the Republican-controlled Senate seats represent 44% of the U.S. population, not 18% — although the actual number may be as high as 47.19%.
When asked if the party has gone too far left, Carville responded, &#8220;They’ve tacked off the damn radar screen. And look, I don’t consider myself a moderate or a centrist. I’m a liberal. &#8230; Here’s another stupid thing: Democrats talking about free college tuition or debt forgiveness. I’m not here to debate the idea. What I can tell you is that people all over this country worked their way through school, sent their kids to school, paid off student loans. They don’t want to hear this s**t. And you saw Warren confronted by an angry voter over this. It’s just not a winning message.&#8221;
Carville then claimed, without evidence, that Trump was a &#8220;career criminal who’s stealing everything that isn’t nailed down out of the White House.&#8221;
Carville then went off on the leftist mainstream media over a New York Times editorial board member&#8217;s mocking comments about Louisiana State University (LSU) canceling classes for the NCAA football national championship game, saying: &#8220;You know how f***ing patronizing that is to people in the South or in the middle of the country? First, LSU has an unusually high graduation rate, but that’s not the point. It’s the g*****n smugness. This is from a guy who lives in New York and serves on the Times editorial board and there’s not a single person he knows that doesn’t pat him on the back for that kind of tweet. He’s so fucking smart. &#8230; The Democratic Party has to drive a narrative that doesn’t give off vapors that we’re smarter than everyone or culturally arrogant.&#8221;

CNN 2007 Election Breakfast

Top Democrat Strategist James Carville On 2020 Elections: ‘We’re Losing Our Damn Minds’, People ‘Don’t Want To Hear This S**t’

Louisiana

Louisiana State University

&#8220;In both law and politics, I think the essential battle is the meta-battle of framing the narrative. As Sun Tzu said, every battle is won before it’s fought. It’s won by choosing the terrain on which it will be fought.&#8221; – Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) to The New Yorker&#8217;s Jeffrey Toobin, <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/06/30/the-absolutist-2">June 2014</a>
Although President Donald Trump no doubt prefers to vent his off-the-cuff frustrations in tweet threads and campaign rallies, it is the planned teleprompter format in which he most clearly excels. Since assuming office, Trump&#8217;s State of the Union addresses have consistently been visceral, evocative, rhetorically fine-tune affairs that make brilliant use of audience guests to drive home his substantive agenda.
Last night&#8217;s speech was <a href="https://theresurgent.com/2020/02/04/best-state-of-the-union-ever/">no exception</a>, and the president was tremendously successful in framing the 2020 election as a stark choice between two competing visions of American governance: The economic prosperity, domestic security, and &#8220;peace through strength&#8221; deterrence of the Right, and the socialism, lawlessness, and capitulatory foreign policy of the Left. To borrow from Cruz&#8217;s quoting of Sun Tzu, Trump has &#8220;cho[sen] the terrain on which&#8221; the 2020 election &#8220;will be fought.&#8221;
The president <a href="https://thefederalist.com/2020/02/05/president-trump-offers-a-sharp-rebuke-of-socialism-at-precisely-the-right-time/">spoke at length</a> about the revving American economic engine, thus placing on the defensive the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-aocs-squad-will-destroy-democrats-2020-josh-hammer">toxic brand of socialism</a> that has come to dominate the modern Democratic Party. The Democrats are a political party with a <a href="https://www.predictit.org/markets/detail/3633/Who-will-win-the-2020-Democratic-presidential-nomination">statistical frontrunner</a> of a presidential nominee who is a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-bernie-sanders-entire-worldview-grotesquely-josh-hammer">lifelong communist activist</a> — a man who literally honeymooned in the Soviet Union and infamously hung a hammer-and-sickle Soviet flag inside his Burlington, Vermont mayoral office. They are advancing that nominee (and so many others who now mimic his economic illiteracy) in the context of an American electorate that, according to reliable pollster Gallup, is the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/americans-are-more-optimistic-about-the-economy-than-they-have-been-in-decades">most optimistic</a> it has been about the economy in decades. Americans <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval_economy-6182.html">currently approve</a> of Trump&#8217;s handling of the economy by over 17%, and Democrats&#8217; solution for that is to stage a presidential primary where one of the leading &#8220;intellectual&#8221; debates among the candidates is whether to literally abolish private health insurance in favor of a government monopoly.
Good luck with that.
The president also spoke about the gruesome horrors of sanctuary cities, the great majority of which are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-why-no-one-pointing-out-sanctuary-cities-josh-hammer">clearly illegal</a> under a straightforward reading of <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/8/1373">8 U.S.C. § 1373(a)</a>: &#8220;Notwithstanding any other provision of Federal, State, or local law, a Federal, State, or local government entity or official may not prohibit, or in any way restrict, any government entity or official from sending to, or receiving from, the [Department of Homeland Security] information regarding the citizenship or immigration status, lawful or unlawful, of any individual.&#8221; The president masterfully provided gut-wrenching details of the crimes committed by illegal aliens mollycoddled by sanctuary jurisdictions — thus seemingly borrowing a tactic from Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas, each of whom has at times provided vivid details of the underlying murders of those defendants whose capital punishment appeals reach the Court. Trump forced Democrats in the House chamber to retreat to the unenviable position of loudly booing his oratory assaults on criminal aliens and the sanctuary jurisdictions that harbor them. It was a remarkable sight to behold.
The president has thus successfully framed the 2020 election as a referendum about whether the nation will reject the Left&#8217;s two most profoundly ruinous current hobbyhorses: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-a-political-wish-for-2020-less-socialism-more-law-and-order">Socialism and lawlessness</a>. He also spoke directly to the heart and mind of the proverbial <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-who-will-stand-for-the-forgotten-american">forgotten American</a> — the tax-paying, church-attending, law-abiding American who still has an innate love and appreciation for what has always made America great. Say what one might about Trump, but one cannot plausibly deny that he is an &#8220;Americanist,&#8221; properly understood.
The American people will head to the ballot box this November with an exceedingly straightforward choice before them. Here is hoping they make the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-here-are-three-reasons-why-i-plan-vote-josh-hammer">right decision</a>.

President Trump Delivers State Of The Union Address

HAMMER: Trump Successfully Framed The Stark 2020 Election Choice During Last Night’s SOTU Address

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

Clarence Thomas

Economy

Law Enforcement

Qassem Soleimani

Radical Islam

There is no doubt that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) is now the leading Democratic presidential candidate. That&#8217;s not because his ideas are overwhelmingly popular — a majority of Americans approve of capitalism, while less than 1 in 5 like socialism; few Americans are on board with total nationalization of health care, even if many like the idea of universal health care; most Americans do not approve of Sanders&#8217; anti-American ideology with regard to foreign policy.
But nobody in the Democratic Party can stop Bernie.
There&#8217;s a reason for this: The Democratic Party has fed off the energy of Sanders&#8217; ideology hoping that, eventually, the voters would come to their senses. Leading candidates have echoed Sanders&#8217; talking points. Sen. Elizabeth Warren adopted and then abandoned Medicare for All, and former Vice President Joe Biden mirrored Sanders&#8217; Howard Zinn historical perspective. Those who have attempted to siphon off Sanders&#8217; base and approximate his authenticity have failed dramatically.
Instead, Sanders continues to resonate with the base. After all, if you&#8217;re going to go with an anti-Constitution, anti-free market, intersectionality-based perspective, why water it down with insincerity? Sanders brags about the fact that his ideology has never changed. He&#8217;s right. Back in 1976, he suggested that he favored &#8220;the public ownership of utilities, banks and major industries.&#8221; He sounded off for decades on the glories of communist Cuba and the Soviet Union; he basked in the joys of bread lines, saying: &#8220;In other countries, people don&#8217;t line up for food. The rich get the food, and the poor starve to death.&#8221; Sanders trots out campaign surrogates who openly claim that the United States is rooted in genocide and racism, and that the American system must be fundamentally remade.
This is radical stuff. But radicals have passion. And politicians of the Democratic Party are unwilling to quell that passion — not when they believe they can capture it and turn it against President Donald Trump.
This is the mirror image of the Republican problem with Trump in 2016: Trump ran on a platform of bashing the Iraq War and America&#8217;s intelligence agencies, blasting free trade, pledging to avoid entitlement program reforms and slamming the door on immigration. Instead of fighting those elements, Republicans decided to tinge their own campaigns with those attitudes and then assume Trump would collapse under the weight of his own personality flaws. That never happened.
Democrats seem to be waiting for another collapse that simply isn&#8217;t coming. Sanders isn&#8217;t going anywhere. His floor is high, and his ceiling remains low — just like Trump. Electability problems aren&#8217;t going to dissuade his supporters, who believe — correctly — that inauthenticity provides its own electoral issues.
There was another path. Some Democrat could have completely and utterly rejected Sanders&#8217; perspective on the world. Some Democrat could have rejected Sanders&#8217; view that America has been a nefarious force in the world; some Democrat could have argued that America isn&#8217;t perfect but that it has always been great; some Democrat could have talked about the wonders of the free market while arguing for greater strictures on it. After all, the majority of Democrats count themselves as patriots who don&#8217;t despise the free market.
But no Democrat was willing to stand up to the Sanders base. They were too greedy for its energy, and too optimistic that the energy was transferable. It wasn&#8217;t. And so the Democratic Party has been captured by an ideology foreign to it — the ideology of Noam Chomsky infused directly into the bloodstream of a party that once touted former President John F. Kennedy. Partisanship is a hell of a drug.

SHAPIRO: Why The Democrats Won’t Stop Bernie

Health Care

Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) smeared and mocked Rush Limbaugh, who is battling stage 4 lung cancer, on Tuesday night in response to President Donald Trump awarding the famous conservative talk radio host with the Presidential Medal of Freedom during the State of the Union Address. Later in her remarks, which were posted to Instagram, Ocasio-Cortez expressed anger that Trump was standing up to socialism and suggested that Trump&#8217;s outreach to the black community was indicative of some sort of conspiracy, which she could not elaborate on.
The most vicious remarks that Ocasio-Cortez made centered around Limbaugh, a famed talk radio host, who revealed this week that he had been diagnosed with advanced lung cancer.
Ocasio-Cortez smeared Limbaugh as being a &#8220;virulent racist,&#8221; while offering zero proof to substantiate her claims, and claimed that his reaction to receiving the award was &#8220;disingenuous.&#8221;
Ocasio-Cortez later said that Limbaugh, while visibly looking ill from the cancer, was a &#8220;joke,&#8221; needed an &#8220;Oprah moment,&#8221; and was &#8220;nauseating.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez viciously *mocks* Rush Limbaugh, who has stage 4 lung cancer, calls his reaction to being awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom &quot;disingenuous&quot;
Says that he, while having cancer, was a &quot;joke,&quot; needed an &quot;Opera moment,&quot; and was &quot;nauseating&quot; <a href="https://t.co/VrsIj1Cmlj">pic.twitter.com/VrsIj1Cmlj</a>
&mdash; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1225007259069009920?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Later, Ocasio-Cortez expressed anger that Trump was sounding the alarm against and fighting back against socialism and far-left Democrats like her who are attempting to implement socialism in the Unite States.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) is angry that Trump is fighting back against her far-left agenda of trying to implement socialism in the U.S.
AOC deflects by claiming that Trump is &quot;introducing fascism, um, into the United States&quot;
That is not true <a href="https://t.co/1rYWAyxKhE">pic.twitter.com/1rYWAyxKhE</a>
&mdash; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1225004620444921856?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Later in the Instagram live video, which was 30 minutes long, Ocasio-Cortez claimed that Trump &#8220;has started giving out cash to black Americans at his rallies&#8221; and that he was being &#8220;extraordinarily deliberate&#8221; in trying to reach out to minority communities.
Ocasio-Cortez tried to suggest that it was a part of a conspiracy, saying, &#8220;it’s being done with a very specific agenda.&#8221;
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) claims that Trump &quot;has started giving out cash to black Americans at his rallies&quot;
She later suggests that Trump&#39;s &quot;deliberately&quot; trying to win over blacks and minorities and it&#39;s a conspiracy &quot;being done with a very specific agenda&quot; <a href="https://t.co/ng5TXuepYz">pic.twitter.com/ng5TXuepYz</a>
&mdash; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1225006643890413569?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 5, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Transcript of Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s remarks about Trump&#8217;s outreach to minority communities:
<blockquote>I think again Trump knows exactly what he is doing, um, he has started, Donald Trump has started giving out cash to black Americans at his rallies, um, this whole State of the Union was like a game show where he was handing out prizes and surprises and reality tv moments and um, and this is exactly his political agenda and this is, it’s not just for political reasons but one of the reasons why I find it so frustrating that the rights of people of color are constantly negotiated and on the chopping block in politics in general is this is one of the concerns because when suddenly the rights of immigrants are controversial or issues pertaining to black Americans are controversial, but issues facing white Americans are not controversial and they are bread and butter issues, this is what starts to happen in our political discourse. And I think that um, we need to be very careful about this, um, because it’s extraordinarily deliberate and it’s being done with a very specific agenda, um, that this also is in line with the fact that Trump decided to make a kind of bogus criminal justice reform advertisement in the Super Bowl. He’s being very deliberate in trying to look like he’s being great for, um, the black community, for communities of color, etc.</blockquote>
Transcript of Ocasio-Cortez&#8217;s remarks about Rush Limbaugh:
<blockquote>“First of all, the Presidential Medal of Freedom is an extraordinarily scared, um, award. We’re talking about putting someone on the same level as Rosa Parks, you know, for example in terms of their contributions to American progress. Rush Limbaugh is a virulent racist, um, but even just on top of that, um, to do it in the middle of a State of the Union and not even dignify it with its own ceremony as it has, there’s all sorts of norms that are being violated, not just for people’s humanity, but also it truly just cheapens the value of it. Um, also him pretending to be surprised was such a joke that this has been news all day, there have been multiple reports from multiple news outlets saying that Rush Limbaugh was going to receive the Medal of Freedom and then Trump announced it and he had to like pretend that this was some kind of Oprah moment, um, was so disingenuous and to do that and to give it to Rush Limbaugh when there were plenty of people in that audience that have contributed positively to the fabric of American society, much more frankly, than he has, um. You know, but it’s red meat to his base, Trump knows what he is doing and he wants to assert that Rush Limbaugh is somehow on the same level as Rosa Parks, um, and it’s truly nauseating.”</blockquote>
This report has been updated.

House Progressives Introduce People&#8217;s Housing Reform

WATCH: AOC Mocks Cancer-Stricken Rush Limbaugh; Suggests Conspiracy Behind Trump Reaching Out To Blacks

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

Rush Limbaugh

There are a few lessons we can learn from the disastrous beginning of the Democrat Party&#8217;s primary process. A process that, as they boasted in a <a href="https://twitter.com/DNC/status/1224456542478462977">tweet</a> on Monday afternoon, they&#8217;d spent the last three years preparing for. Well the pilot of the Hindenburg was also &#8220;prepared,&#8221; but all of the preparation in the world cannot compensate for incompetent execution.
Somehow, after the build up, Monday night ended without a winner — or any results at all. It seems the Democrats decided to hand the facilitation and management of its primary over to a <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/iowa-caucus-results-delayed-by-apparent-app-issue-11580801699">secretive firm</a> literally called Shadow Inc, which is a bit like sending your children to a daycare center named Child Neglect LLC.
These are the sorts of unforced errors the Democrats cannot seem to stop themselves from making, as they continue to achieve the remarkable feat of making the Republican Party look competent by comparison. Of course, I may be giving them too much credit by calling the Iowa debacle an &#8220;error.&#8221; That categorization assumes there is no deliberate corruption at play here, and that is probably not a safe assumption. Especially given the Democrats&#8217; track record with primaries.
All in all, this amounts to more good news for Donald Trump, a man who has been blessed with the most impotent and ineffectual adversaries the world has ever seen. But it is also an ominous warning about the future, should Trump still manage to lose to these blundering clowns (a possibility that seems less likely with each passing day).
<iframe title="Democrat Clown Show Wants To Run Health Care System | The Matt Walsh Show Ep. 419" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/qpWybf4OtGk?start=77&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
We should keep in mind that these people, who cannot figure out how to operate their own primary, also want to operate the entire health care system. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren in particular have promised a complete government takeover of health care. Indeed, Sanders is on the record advocating a complete government takeover of <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html">all major industries</a>. Which, by the way, is full-blown communism. And not &#8220;communism&#8221; in the loose, pejorative sense, but actual communism. The communism of Soviet Russia and the Khmer Rouge and many of the other evil, blood-drenched regimes of the 20th century.
This latter fact should be enough to cause us to run fast and far away from any candidate who advocates a full government takeover of any industry, let alone every industry. But if the 20th century is too far in the past to make an impression, than this Monday is lesson enough.
In order for the plans proposed by Sanders, Warren, and company, to have any appeal, we must first place our trust in the skill, competency, and integrity of government bureaucrats. This is the part of the case that the socialists never bother trying to make. Yes, they can tell a harrowing tale about the evils of capitalism, and they can convince us to look with suspicion on corporations and those dreaded billionaires, but they never get to the part where they actually explain why we should trust them instead.
That&#8217;s because even they could not make that argument with a straight face. We&#8217;ve all been to the DMV. We know how the government works. This week is just the latest example.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-inconsistencies-found-in-democrat-iowa-caucus-reporting-conspiracies-explode">‘Inconsistencies’ Found In Democrat Iowa Caucus Reporting, Conspiracies Explode</a>

WALSH: The Democrat Party Can’t Run Its Own Primary But Wants To Run The Health Care System

An alleged campaign script that Democrat presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; (I-VT) campaign is deploying in Iowa seeks to downplay voters&#8217; concern over the fact that Sanders is a socialist by suggesting to voters that they really don&#8217;t know what &#8220;socialism&#8221; means.
The alleged call/canvass script posted in the Sanders campaign office reads:
<blockquote>CONCERN: &#8220;Bernie is a socialist, and that&#8217;s scary to me.&#8221;
AFFIRM: &#8220;I get that! Labels can be intimidating, [especially] those unfamiliar to us.&#8221;
ANSWER: &#8220;The truth is, what Bernie stands for is social equality. He wants to ensure equal opportunity for all, not just those on the top. That means a healthcare system, school system, and a [government] that&#8217;s reliable, accessible, and effective. That&#8217;s what he means by &#8216;socialism.'&#8221;
REDIRECT: &#8220;In what ways is your life impacted by the current system/government?&#8221;</blockquote>
Peter Hamby, a Vanity Fair contributor posted a picture of the script, which he said was located in one of Sanders&#8217; Des Moines offices.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Bernie call/canvass script on the wall in one of his Des Moines offices. CONCERN: “Bernie is a socialist and that’s scary to me.” <a href="https://t.co/jKmpH31QlC">pic.twitter.com/jKmpH31QlC</a>
&mdash; Peter Hamby (@PeterHamby) <a href="https://twitter.com/PeterHamby/status/1223348393784889344?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 31, 2020</a></blockquote>
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Paul R. Gregory, who has a PhD in economics from Harvard, <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/how-socialist-bernie-sanders">explained</a> in an article last year that Sanders is a socialist because there is little to no difference between socialists and self-described &#8220;Democratic Socialist.&#8221;
Gregory writes:
<blockquote>Sanders has spent a long political career obfuscating his true political beliefs. The media rarely pushes back on his standard platitudes, such as “we must create an economy that works for all, not just the very wealthy.” His two-minute video, promising to explain his brand of socialism, leaves the viewer clueless, probably deliberately. Sanders insists that he is not a “socialist” but a “Democratic Socialist,” as if the difference is self-explanatory. When pressed further about his Democratic Socialism, he resorts to filibustering about the Scandinavian-like paradise of free medicine and education, guaranteed jobs, livable wages, and other free things he intends to introduce when elected. He does not bother to note that the Nordic states rank among the most free-enterprise economies of the globe.</blockquote>
Gregory noted that Sanders, who claims that he is a &#8220;Democratic Socialist,&#8221; is &#8220;fully on board with the [Democratic Socialists of America (DSA)] narratives of capitalist exploitation and the need to organize&#8221; and that there is no distance between what Sanders believes and what DSA promotes.
Gregory notes that according to official DSA literature, Democratic Socialists believe:
<blockquote>First, Democratic Socialism wants more than an expansive welfare state.
Second, capitalism is a zero-sum game in which the rich get richer by making the poor and working class worse off.
Third, the poor, working class, and other underdogs can overturn the capitalist order only if they are organized.
Fourth and most important, capital must be publicly owned because there is no real democracy with private ownership of capital.</blockquote>
Gregory noted that there is no difference between what Sanders believes and what DSA believes, which is socialism.
Gregory concluded:
<blockquote>According to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/14/politics/kfile-bernie-nationalization/index.html">CNN files</a>, Sanders advocated in the 1970s the nationalization of most major industries. According to Sanders <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/03/bernie-sanders-socialism-nationalization-industries">then</a>: “The oil industry, and the entire energy industry, should be owned by the public and used for the public good – not for additional profits for billionaires.” When <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUtssQuCH3w">asked</a> recently whether his position on nationalization has changed, Sanders pivoted to his “free stuff” filibuster. No answer.
What Sanders advocated a half-century back is much less important than his current legislative initiatives. Let’s face it: Sanders’ signature Medicare-for-all, as laid out in his <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/senate-bill/1804">Senate bill</a>, nationalizes all medical care. Private health insurance and employer insurance disappear and private providers must reorganize as non-profits and/or governmental organizations. A massive government bureaucracy determines our medical care – a sort of super VA. If Sanders is prepared to nationalize <a href="https://www.cms.gov/research-statistics-data-and-systems/statistics-trends-and-reports/nationalhealthexpenddata/nationalhealthaccountshistorical.html">one fifth</a> of the economy, he should have no qualms about doing the same to his loathed private energy and finance sectors.
Marx declared that a socialist revolution would be required to part the capitalists from their capital. Democratic Socialists (DSA and Sanders) see a different path to what they consider true democracy: Organize the poor, the working class, and all other oppressed groups into what James Madison <a href="http://www2.oberlin.edu/faculty/gkornbl/GJK/H103F05/Fed10annotated-A.htm">called</a> an “overbearing majority.” Such a coalition would have enough power to transfer capital to the state by “democratic means.”</blockquote>
Sanders has seen a surge in support in recent weeks as the Democrat primary kicks into high gear on Monday in Iowa where Sanders is leading in some polls.
Late on Friday, Politico reported that some Democratic National Committee (DNC) members were already looking for ways to slow down Sanders in an attempt to prevent him from getting the nomination.
“In conversations on the sidelines of a DNC executive committee meeting and in telephone calls and texts in recent days, about a half-dozen members have discussed the possibility of a policy reversal to ensure that so-called superdelegates can vote on the first ballot at the party’s national convention,” Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/01/31/dnc-superdelegates-110083">reported</a>. “Such a move would increase the influence of DNC members, members of Congress and other top party officials, who now must wait until the second ballot to have their say if the convention is contested.”
The New York Times also noted on Friday that party officials changed the rules around qualifying for debates in an apparent attempt to benefit Democrat presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg.
&#8220;It has eliminated the requirement that candidates must have received donations from hundreds of thousands of individuals. Mr. Bloomberg, a multibillionaire, is running a self-funded campaign and is not soliciting donations,&#8221; The Times reported. &#8220;The changes, which represent the most significant tightening of debate requirements this cycle, set off a fresh and pointed round of criticism at a critical moment in the race, as several campaigns braced for the reality check that the Iowa caucuses will provide. And the edict from party officials, which some saw as a concession to Mr. Bloomberg, quickly reignited concerns among those who believe the D.N.C.’s shifting rules for the debates privilege some candidates and campaigns over others.&#8221;
The Sanders campaign responded: “To now change the rules in the middle of the game to accommodate Mike Bloomberg, who is trying to buy his way into the Democratic nomination, is wrong. That’s the definition of a rigged system.”
During a recent interview on CBS News, Sanders <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-impossible-to-know-how-much-my-60-trillion-in-plans-cost-cbs-news-grills-him">said</a> that it was &#8220;impossible&#8221; to know how much his $60 trillion in government proposals would cost.
The Sanders campaign has been repeatedly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/sanders-campaign-rocked-again-more-staff-caught-advocating-violence-against-opponents">rocked</a> in recent weeks as explosive undercover videos from James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas have repeatedly shown paid Sanders staffers praising Soviet Russia, gulags, and advocating for violence against political opponents.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders holds a campaign event in Indianiola, Iowa

Photo Shows How Bernie’s Campaign Tries To Downplay To Voters That He’s Socialist

2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders&#8217; (I-VT) campaign was rocked again on Tuesday after James O&#8217;Keefe&#8217;s Project Veritas released more undercover footage exposing paid Sanders campaign staffers appearing to advocate for violence against political opponents.
The new video from Project Veritas allegedly shows Sanders campaign South Carolina field organizers Mason Baird and Daniel Taylor advocating for &#8220;extreme action&#8221; and &#8220;militancy&#8221; against political opponents and private property.
Project Veritas provided the following highlights of things that Baird said:
<ul>
<li>“I’ve canvassed with someone who’s an anarchist, and with someone who’s a Marxist-Leninist. So, we attract radical, truly radical people in the campaign … obviously that’s not outward-facing.”</li>
<li>“A lot of those people who do that kind of work, are … their politics fall well outside of the American sort of norm. So, they&#8217;re Marxist-Leninist, they&#8217;re anarchists, they&#8217;re these types of folks, and um, and they have more of a mind for direct action, for engaging in politics outside of the electoral system.”</li>
<li>“A lot of the stories we’re told in the United States about, you know, the gulags and the persecution of the Kulaks and things like that are exaggerated … we certainly don&#8217;t have, uh, a straight perspective on that stuff here in America.”</li>
<li>“We would need a federal government and a labor movement that is working together to strip power away from capitalists and preferably directing that violence towards property.”</li>
<li>“It would, it&#8217;s gonna take, you know, it&#8217;s gonna take militancy … like a militant labor movement that’s willing to … strike, and if necessary, you know, just destroy property and things like that.”</li>
<li>“… after we abolish landlords, we don’t have to kill them …”</li>
<li>“… once we break up Google, YouTube, Facebook,  nationalize these things, then that would be a huge thing forward so far as education stuff goes.”</li>
</ul>
Project Veritas provided the the following highlights of things that Taylor said:
<ul>
<li>“For me personally, I have no problem going all in on the campaign stuff because you’re planting a seed … yeah, the whole socialist thing four years ago was a whole lot more toxic than it is today …”</li>
<li>“We don’t want to scare people off, you first have to feel it out before you get into the crazy stuff &#8230; You know we were talking about more extreme organizations like Antifa, you were talking about, Yellow Vests, all that but we’re kinda keeping that on the back-burner for now.”</li>
<li>“We have all this momentum, where do we go, regardless of the outcome, after it’s all over? Change won’t come easily, regardless. Even if Bernie is elected, change will not come swiftly or easily, so the connections we make now in the campaign with people, and volunteers, it’s important we retain that regardless of the outcome. It’s unfortunate that we have to make plans for extreme action but like I said, they’re not going to give it to us even if Bernie is elected.”</li>
</ul>
The new release from Project Veritas comes after the group released undercover <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-bernies-a-legit-socialist-masquerading-as-a-democratic-socialist">videos</a> involving a paid Sanders campaign staffer in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-staff-people-who-push-back-on-revolution-should-expect-a-violent-response">Iowa</a> and in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/another-bernie-staffer-allegedly-promotes-violence-kill-the-rich-put-republicans-in-camps">South Carolina</a> in recent weeks that showed the staffers allegedly advocating for violence against political opponents. The Sanders campaign has largely ignored media requests on the matter and even <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bernie-campaign-calls-police-on-reporters-for-asking-questions-about-his-staff-talking-about-killing-people">called the police</a> on journalists who pressed for a response from the campaign on the videos.
WATCH:
<iframe title="#Expose2020 Part IV: Two More Bernie Staffers Promote &quot;Extreme Action&quot; and Property Destruction" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4zpCVM0delQ?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Presidential Candidate Bernie Sanders holds Town Hall In Perry, Iowa

Sanders Campaign Rocked Again: More Staff Caught Advocating Violence Against Opponents

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