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Democratic socialism and U.S. presidential race

Posted February. 12, 2016 07:27,   

Updated February. 12, 2016 07:33

한국어

John Reed, an American writer, was a socialist who authored "Ten Days That Shook the World" after witnessing the 1917 Bolshevik revolution as a correspondent in Russia. In the same year, 20 percent of U.S. workers participated in strikes. There was a strong socialist trend in the United States until the end of World War I. One of the pioneers was Eugene Debs, a labor activist who founded the Industrial Workers of the World in 1905. For U.S. socialists, including historian Howard Zinn, the author of "A People's History of the United States," and Senator Bernie Sanders from Vermont, visiting Terre Haute, Indiana, the birthplace of Debs, is a kind of pilgrimage.

Sanders expresses his political ideology with the term "democratic socialism," which is similar to Europe's social democracy. He is known for making an eight-and-a-half-hour filibuster speech at age 69 in 2010 to protest against a bipartisan tax cut deal. He used the public sentiment expressed through the Occupy Wall Street movement following the 2008 financial crisis as a main driving force behind his presidential race.

Sanders clinched a decisive victory on Wednesday in the New Hampshire primary, the second one of the Democratic Party. He finished second in the Iowa caucuses, the party's first primary, only by a small margin. However, it is still premature to predict that he will really win the Democratic presidential candidacy. It remains to be seen how he will perform on "Super Tuesday" on March 1, when 13 states will hold their primaries simultaneously. The day might come when Americans see their first socialist president before having their first woman president.

As for the Republican Party, the foul-mouthed capitalist contender Donald Trump had an overwhelming victory in the New Hampshire primary. Before joining the Democratic Party, Sanders was an independent politician who called himself a socialist. Sociologist Daniel Bell considered it a blessing that the politics on the New Continent was not contaminated by the ideological division in the Old Continent. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg is considering running in the presidential race, saying that he will not stand by and watch either of the two political outsiders being elected president at least to protect the pride in the U.S. politics.



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