> What makes Sanders and left-wing Democrats much more of a problem for
> leftists here than their social-democratic counterparts abroad are for
> leftists there is that the US is the hegemon.
> It might be a different story if the Democratic and Republican Parties
> both split and reconfigured themselves into three new parties, putting
> Sanders, left-wing Democrats, and others on the Left in a new social
> democratic party, DLC democrats and moderate Republicans into a new
> centrist party, and right-wing Republicans into a new right-wing
> party. Then, Sanders and left-wing Democrats can play a role of
> occassionally useful opposition, like their European and Japanese
> counterparts.
===========================
Yes, I don't know why there has been so much discussion and even puzzlement
about Sanders and his "socialism." He's an old story and everyone knows
Vermont is close to Canada and so long as he remains a rare bird in American
politics, he is regarded as a harmless and even exotic curiousity.
Calling oneself a "socialist" doesn't mean anything any more. It did when the central political conflict was between socialists favouring public ownership and liberals favouring welfare capitalism, as it was for much of the last century, especially up to WW II. But socialism ultimately morphed into social democracy, which was predicated on the abandonment of public ownership, and became indistinguishable from liberalism. In fact, social democrats allied with liberals against a resurgent conservatism which has become the focal political conflict following the decline of the industrial working class and socialist movement.
So Yoshie is right. The only real difference between US liberals concentrated in the Democratic party and their social democratic counterparts abroad, including the NDP across the border, is that they are required to accept responsibility for administering an empire in order to govern while the others are largely free of having to carry imperialist baggage.
Sanders has had to broadly adapt to this requirement as he as assumed more electoral responsibility in the same way as the more opportunistic Clintons and Bidens have done, as Nader and Camejo would have to do, as anyone on this list would have to - short of a social earthquake from below which scattered the political deck and presented new possibilities inside and outside the legislative arena.