The packaging of an idea matters a great deal. You can get people to agree with all sorts of socialist principles, but if you start talking about socialism a lot are going to punch out.

This isn’t to say we should never utter the word “socialism,” and your point about the futility of completely catering to mainstream media is a good one. It’s really about picking the right battles, and figuring out where the benefit of talking about socialism as socialism is worth the flak you’ll inevitably catch from it. I don’t think Bernie really picked anything up from his Cuba comments, and he got a ton of overtly-negative coverage over it. It’s difficult to underestimate how rabid U.S. anticommunism is.

Left anticommunism makes you sound extremely weak, and every time you engage in it you’re shooting yourself in the foot.

Left anticommunism is bad, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about politicians not proactively mentioning those countries, or at worst reframing the discussion when those countries are brought up in bad faith as obvious bait. No one who throws “bUt VuVuZeLa!11!!” into a conversation actually wants to have a serious discussion about the shape of the Venezuelan government or economy, and no politician is going to change minds on that, unless maybe they’re the president. I’m fine with politicians recognizing unfavorable rhetorical territory and choosing to fight elsewhere.

we need to start by having a large enough cohort of people saying without qualifiers that the socialist countries were good that that opinion can enter into the mainstream discourse.

I agree. The reason I kept emphasizing politicians in the first part of my comment is that they’re not the right ones to lead the charge here. They have something to lose by engaging in that fight, and victory over U.S. anticommunism (take a step back and think about how monumental of an undertaking that is) is far enough off that they should be focusing on more immediate, more concrete policies that affect people’s daily lives.

But you and I, and other leftists on the ground? We don’t have an elected politician or a potentially-useful political career to tank, and we can get into the type of extended, personalized discussions that are necessary to deprogram someone suffering from anticommunism-by-default. That’s why I’ll personally go to bat for socialist states all day, but I’m not going to blame the likes of progressive Democrats for not getting into the weeds about the good done by Chinese land reform.