Sanders calls his brand of socialism a pathway to beating Trump

Sliding in public polling and seeking to seize attention in a sprawling Democratic primary field, Sanders cast himself at times in direct competition with President Donald Trump, contrasting his own collectivist views against what he called the “corporate socialism” practiced by the president and the Republican Party.

And Sanders, 77, declared that his version of socialism was a political winner, having lifted Roosevelt to victory four times and powered his own career in government.

“Today in the second decade of the 21st century, we must take up the unfinished business of the New Deal and carry it to completion,” Sanders said.

The issue of socialism has taken on outsize importance for a party being pulled to the left by an energized wing of progressives seeking transformational change. Trump has repeatedly called Sanders “crazy” and extrapolated the socialist label to all Democrats. He and other Republicans have seized on proposals like “Medicare for all” to portray Democrats as far out of the mainstream, signaling clearly that it will be a major line of attack in the general election.

Speaking in a small theater on the campus of George Washington University, Sanders struck back at these negative characterizations.

“Let me be clear, I do understand that I and other progressives will face massive attacks from those who attempt to use the word ‘socialism’ as a slur,” he said, “but I should also tell you that I have faced and overcome these attacks for decades, and I am not the only one.”

Sanders — an independent who has not joined the Democratic Party but is making his second bid for its presidential nomination — presented his vision of democratic socialism not as a set of extreme principles but as a pathway to “economic rights,” invoking the accomplishments of Roosevelt and King. He argued that his ideology is embodied by long-standing popular programs, including Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, that Republicans have labeled socialist.

Saying that the United States must reject a path of hatred and divisiveness, he said it must “instead find the moral conviction to choose a different path, a higher path, a path of compassion, justice and love.”

“And that is the path that I call democratic socialism,” he continued.

Sanders mentioned Trump by name eight times during his remarks, once more than he said the words “democratic socialism” — mirroring the playbook of Joe Biden, the current Democratic front-runner, who has squarely portrayed himself as being in a direct showdown with the president. Sanders said the president “believes in corporate socialism for the rich and powerful; I believe in a democratic socialism that works for the working families of this country.”

In a pre-speech interview, Sanders said he aimed to draw the president into a one-on-one debate about his agenda.

“It’s going to provoke, I know, a fierce debate,” Sanders said. “I eagerly look forward to President Trump’s tweets.”

Yet while Sanders drew distinctions between himself and the president, he also included allusions to the contest that would precede a showdown with Trump. Ticking through a list of New Deal opponents, Sanders included “the conservative wing of FDR’s own Democratic Party,” an unambiguous reference to his centrist foes in today’s Democratic Party.

Sanders delivered his remarks at a moment his campaign is flagging in early polls. A Monmouth University survey released Wednesday, an hour before Sanders’ speech, showed that Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts had surpassed Sanders among Democratic voters in Nevada, a key early state, with 19% support to Sanders’ 13%. Biden led with 36%, but the results mark the first time that Warren has led Sanders in a major poll of 2020 voters.

A poll over the weekend from The Des Moines Register and CNN showed that Sanders was running second but that he had lost ground over the last three months among likely Iowa caucusgoers, as Warren and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana, surged to within 1 or 2 points.

The rise of Warren has worried Sanders supporters, who see her as an ideological ally who is nevertheless targeting some of the same voters who were drawn to Sanders in 2016.

“The speech is a pretty clear indication he is feeling the heat from Elizabeth Warren’s recent momentum among progressive voters and recognizes that if he doesn’t do something dramatic she will overtake him,” said Jen Psaki, who served as White House communications director during the Obama administration. “It is his attempt to reclaim the anti-capitalist mantle he ran on in 2016.”

Among his supporters at the speech Wednesday, Sanders’ version of socialism seemed perfectly reasonable.

“In America we embrace a lot of socialist policies already, like public education and parks,” said one attendee, Jeremiah Lowery, 33, who works for an environmental organization. “Bernie is just moving America forward by his full embrace of democratic socialism.”

The speech was designed for maximum media exposure. About one-third of the audience were journalists, at a venue within walking distance of the Washington bureaus of several national news organizations. Sanders read from a teleprompter — a rarity for him — and stood before a line of a dozen American flags.

Sanders called for a “21st-century economic Bill of Rights,” which he said would address health care, wages, education, affordable housing, the environment and retirement. And he touted his record of putting forth policy plans, a subtle allusion to Warren, whose ranking in the polls rose as she released a steady stream of policy proposals.

“Over the course of this election my campaign has been releasing — and will continue to release — detailed proposals addressing each of these yet-to-be-realized economic rights,” Sanders said.

If Sanders was laying out views that have long shaped his political career, he was also tackling what is potentially his biggest political vulnerability. Even before he entered the presidential race, Sanders had faced skepticism about whether his upend-the-establishment views could appeal to enough voters in a general election, with Republicans — and some of his Democratic opponents — hurling thinly veiled broadsides against socialism.

“Most Democrats running don’t subscribe to Bernie Sanders’ democratic socialism and his economic policies,” said Mary Anne Marsh, a Democratic strategist in Boston who worked for Sens. John Kerry and Edward Kennedy. “Ultimately, Bernie Sanders giving this speech will appeal to his base and no one else, and it gives fodder to Trump and the Republicans.”

Indeed, second-tier Democratic presidential candidates seemed poised to grasp some political oxygen for themselves by attacking Sanders’ speech. Former Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado plans his own Washington speech on Thursday in which he will warn that nominating Sanders will lead to reelecting Trump.

“Democrats must say loudly and clearly that we are not socialists,” Hickenlooper will say, according to his prepared remarks. “If we do not, we will end up reelecting the worst president in our country’s history.”

Sanders’ embrace of the democratic socialist label is hardly new. In the 1970s, he argued for nationalizing some industries, including energy companies and banks. And as mayor of Burlington, Vermont, in the 1980s, he went further than many Democrats in supporting socialist leaders. Throughout his political career, he has spoken of revolution, espousing a sympathy for the working class and the poor, who he argues are suffering at the hands of profit-seeking corporations and the rich and powerful who lead them.

“This is a debate that the American people have got to have,” he said in the pre-speech interview. “What are we entitled to as human beings?”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.