On Friday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Gwen Moore (D-WI) argued that “democratic socialists are people who believe in a market economy, they believe in capitalism, but they believe in regulations as well.” And “we’re not going to be bullied by their characterization of maintaining a safety net for Americans and calling it Communism, no.”
Moore said, “Republicans are very disappointed that David Crowley won that election, because they had planned their entire campaign around characterizing Francesca Hong as a Communist, as a democratic — as a socialist and really conjuring up fear among people who have come to understand the extremes in those regimes as having been very harmful for them.”
Later, she added, “I’ll tell you, socialism is one extreme of an economic system and totalitarianism is another extreme. I think — she tried to distinguish herself, because democratic socialists are people who believe in a market economy, they believe in capitalism, but they believe in regulations as well. They believe that a company shouldn’t be able to dump their chemicals into fresh water, that there ought to be reg[ulations], you ought not be able to drill everywhere, that there ought to be a safety net, people ought to have Social Security and [Meals on Wheels] and Medicaid and Medicare. And these are things that Republicans, historically, every minute of the existence of Medicare and Medicaid have called socialism. So, we’re not going to be bullied by their characterization of maintaining a safety net for Americans and calling it Communism, no. Francesca Hong ran a very great campaign, which is what I was referring to. She had boots on the ground, they talked to people, they talked to people about affordability, and they really latched onto the sentiment of most people who are just sick and tired of being sick and tired and are exhausted trying to negotiate more month than money.”
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