The S-word for Ds

[Modified article by Paul Krugman] "Nobody in these [Democratic candidate] debates wants government ownership of the means of production, which is what socialism used to mean. [Still does to the educated.] Most of the candidates are, instead, what Europeans would call “social democrats”: advocates of a private-sector-driven economy, but with a stronger social safety net, enhanced bargaining power for workers and tighter regulation of corporate malfeasance [swamp-draining, in other words]. They want America to be more like Denmark, not more like Venezuela.

Leading Republicans RepuGNicans, however, routinely describe Democrats, even those on the right of their party, as socialists. Indeed, all indications are that denunciations of Democrats’ “socialist” agenda will be front and center in the general election campaign. [Because fear, not facts drive those sufficiently uninformed [read, DISinformed and duped] to vote RepuGNican] And everyone in the news media accepts this as the normal state of affairs.

Which goes to show the extent to which Republican RepuGNican extremism has been accepted simply as a fact of life, barely worth mentioning.

To see what I [PK] mean, imagine the media firestorm, the screams about lost civility, we’d experience if any prominent Democrat described Republicans RepuGNicans as a party of fascists, let alone if Democrats made that claim the centerpiece of their national campaign. And such an accusation would indeed be somewhat over the top — but it would be a lot closer to the truth than calling Democrats socialists.

The other day The Times published an Op-Ed that used analysis of party platforms to place U.S. political parties on a left-right-wrong spectrum along with their counterparts abroad. The study found that the Greedy Oligarchic Partisanship is far to the right wrong of mainstream European conservative parties. It’s even to the right wrong of anti-immigrant parties like Britain’s UKIP and France’s National Rally. Basically, if we saw something like America’s Republicans RepuGNican in another country, we’d classify them as white nationalist extremists."