Sanders talks democratic socialist views

For five decades, Bernie Sanders has embraced the label of democratic socialism, one that has defined his political ideology and won him millions of loyal supporters even as it has become a cudgel for opponents seeking to portray him as too radical.

On Wednesday, two weeks before the first set of primary debates, he issued a robust defense of his core political beliefs, delivering a formal address on democratic socialism in what will amount to the most aggressive attempt yet to diffuse voter concerns about his electability.

Sanders — an independent Vermont senator who has not joined the Democratic Party but is running for the Democratic nomination — presented his vision of democratic socialism not as a set of extreme principles but in terms of “economic rights,” invoking the accomplishments of Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. And he argued that his ideology is embodied by long-standing popular programs, including Social Security and Medicare, that opponents often label as socialist.

Saying that the United States must reject a path of hatred and divisiveness, he said the nation must “instead find the moral conviction to choose a different path, a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love. And that is the path that I call democratic socialism.”

“Today in the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion.”

If Sanders was laying out views that have long shaped his political career, he was also tackling his biggest political vulnerability at a moment when he is falling in some early polls and running second behind Joe Biden. Even before he entered the presidential race, Sanders has faced skepticism about whether his upend-the establishment views can appeal to enough voters in a general election, with Republicans — and some of his Democratic presidential opponents — hurling thinly veiled broadsides against socialism.

The issue has taken on outsize importance for a party being pulled to the left by an energized wing of progressives seeking transformational change.