How President Trump makes socialism look better every day
Only a handful of Democrats in Congress (and just one Democrat-adjacent presidential contender) identify as “socialist,” but they appear to be the chief targets of President Donald Trump as he faces a confident Democratic opposition in the House of Representatives. “We are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country,” he said in his State of the Union address last week, declaring that “America will never be a socialist country.”
The White House actually presaged this strategy last October, just before the midterm elections, in a report from its Council of Economic Advisers. They cite calls for singlepayer health care and higher tax rates as evidence that “socialism is making a comeback in American political discourse,” with, they argue, dire consequences for the American economy. Next came the president’s address to Congress. And this week at a rally in El Paso, Texas, Trump went after the “radical left,” blasting a caricature of progressive climate policies. “I really don’t like their policy of taking away your car, of taking away your airplane flights, of ‘Let’s hop a train to California,’ ” he said, bizarrely adding that under the Green New Deal resolution introduced by liberal Democrats, “You’re not allowed to own cows anymore.”
The clear expectation is that many or most Americans will recoil at any hint of “socialism,” either on principle or because of its association with Venezuela, which the administration has tried to elevate as a major adversary. That might have been true in Trump’s cultural and political touchstone, the 1980s, when Ronald Rea- gan’s hard-line anti- Communism defined U.S. foreign and domestic policy. But in 2019, the Cold War is long over. The Soviet Union is a memory. And there is no comparable global ideological struggle over economic systems that might give weight to Trump’s rhetoric. There’s not much fear to monger. Instead, the president’s decision to make “socialism” his opponent might have the opposite effect, potentially bolstering the movement and its ideals.
In their vehement opposition to the Obama administration, conservatives narrowed “socialism” down to virtually any attempt to intervene in the economy on behalf of the broad public. The effort to save the U. S. car industry? Socialist. Regulated markets to purchase health insurance? Socialist. Market-based measures for reducing carbon emissions? Also socialist.
This aggressive labeling coincided with a rise in favorable attitudes toward socialism among Democrats. In 2010, according to Gallup, 53 percent said they had a positive view of socialism. In 2016, it was 58 percent. Some of this is the effect of Bernie Sanders’ presidential campaign, which brought “socialism” back into mainstream political conversation. But conservative demonization of liberal Democratic policies as socialist played a major part as well.
What we actually have are ideas like the “co- determination” plan proposed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, which would give workers a significant say in corporate governance — a major change from the status quo of shareholder- driven capitalism but a far cry from abolishing capitalist ownership itself. Similarly, the Medicare for All Act introduced by Sanders would move every American onto a new government plan but would also permit supplemental private insurance and retain the present system of privately owned hospitals and other medical providers.
Even the Green New Deal falls within the tradition established by its namesake, which itself was attacked as a harbinger of socialism. It provides new economic guarantees to Americans while substantially altering, but not fundamentally rearranging, power relationships within the economy. Reform, not revolution.
Trump is unpopular and drives Americans away from his positions. According to a Gallup survey last summer, after almost a year and a half of anti-immigration rhetoric from the president, 75 percent of Americans said immigration was a “good thing” and 29 percent said immigration levels should “decrease.” Most wanted either stasis or an increase in the number of immigrants. Just this January, in a poll taken during the partial government shutdown, 58 percent of Americans said they opposed “substantial expansion” of a border wall between the United States and Mexico, a direct rebuke to the president.
If anything can put socialism in a more positive light, it is Trump raging against it. Which means conservatives and Republicans may want to think a little harder before they embrace a campaign strategy that relies on him for messaging. If “socialism” is like every other idea Trump has attacked and disdained, then the Republican Party should prepare for even more Americans embracing the term — and the ideas that come with it.