Mike Solana

it's not a false binary. you either live in a country in which industry is controlled privately or you don't. bernie sanders has a long history of espousing real socialism - the nationalization of most industry in this country. what he wants is absolutely nothing like scandinavia

"oh but 'democratic socialism.'" that is a made up thing. socialism is almost *always* democratic. but once dominant it necessarily, to sustain itself, collapses into dictatorship. and no, "democratic socialists" aren't running scandinavia.

so hypothetically, if I said I favor free markets in most industries but I want single-payer healthcare and the government in charge of education, which side of your non-false binary am I on?

it depends, have you abolished the private option? do you believe i should be allowed to open my own school? purchase my own healthcare?

re: health insurance, personally I'd favor a situation like in France or Sweden, where private insurance exists but it's rare because the public option is so good. And I would define that as closer to socialism than our system, on a sliding scale

honestly, jeff, i think you and i are much closer — and folks like ocasio and bernie much, much further away — than you are willing to face

Bernie isn't my preferred presidential candidate. but the idea that this country will overcorrect in the direction of socialism worries me a lot less than the idea that we will undercorrect, or move even farther away

I think our disagreement is this: You see "socialism" as a totalizing ideology. I see it as a tool in the toolkit of all governments, one that most other democracies make much better use of than ours.