The idea is that people will be more willing to seriously consider socialism if they don’t turn their brains off as soon as the word is mentioned.
She could have easily said that what she regards as socialism is what promotes the interests of the working class above other concerns or what other countries are doing or have done.
This would have been a good answer, too, but the answer she gave (1) responds to the part of the question about which countries she wants to emulate, and (2) is in a broader context of pointing to stuff like Britain’s NHS as a superior healthcare model.
I just think by avoiding america’s enemies, it avoids the question of how illegitimate the government is.
Consider how radical “the U.S. government is illegitimate” is. That’s not an idea that’s going to click with very many people who watch CNN; they’re going to reject it as it’s too far outside their current beliefs. You can’t throw people in the deep end right away, you have to bring them along a little bit and at least get them comfortable treading in leftist waters. It’s a pipeline to leftism, not an instant conversion.
Then there’s the idea that most people don’t care about foreign policy much anyways, and so you’re not going to score points with anyone for having great foreign policy takes most of the time. There’s no much to gain, but you can easily get roasted – look at how Bernie got a crucial week’s worth of bad coverage over extremely innocuous comments about Cuba’s healthcare and education.
I know that’s the goal of the idea. I’m skeptical about its efficacy or that it will lead to anything. I’m only seeing socialist becoming another term for liberal.
If “socialist” becomes as mainstream and inoffensive as “liberal,” that makes it far easier to talk to people about socialism. You can talk about socialism as socialism, you can point them to openly-socialist resources, it’s easier to get them to reconsider what they know about actually socialist countries.
Maybe I’ve simply had poor experiences with this, but it’s only become more difficult talking with them. Now they won’t accept that they might have a wrong idea of what socialism means or what we should be advancing. I already have associates who treat socialism (the term) as inoffensive, but they still basically promote mainstream liberal centrism. They refer to American cops as socialist. They call Biden a socialist and act all proud.
The only thing that’s changed is they’ll refer to what they previously called socialist (Cuba, USSR, Marxism, class politics, etc) as “authoritarian” or “divisive” or whatever word they come up with on the spot. All they’ve done is take the spooky s-word and replace it with others.
