Bernie Sanders to Invoke F.D.R. in Speech Defining His Vision of Democratic Socialism
Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont will be channeling Franklin D. Roosevelt more than Eugene V. Debs on Thursday afternoon as he delivers the most important speech of his bid for the Democratic presidential nomination: an attempt to demystify Democratic Socialism, his long-held political philosophy, and tie it to his vision of America.
The unstated goal of the speech is to address Mr. Sanders’s biggest challenge: electability. While he is running strong among liberals, many other Democrats see him as an anti-establishment protest candidate from the left-wing fringe who isn’t in the party (he is one of two independents in the Senate). They fear they would be wasting their votes choosing him over Hillary Rodham Clinton in the nomination fight, even though some opinion polls show him doing just as well in the 2016 general election as Mrs. Clinton.
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In explaining Democratic Socialism, which envisions democracies with socialist economic systems, Mr. Sanders plans to position himself as the political heir to one of the Democratic Party’s great heroes, F.D.R, according to Sanders aides who provided a preview of the speech. Mr. Sanders, building on his descriptions of the Roosevelt-backed Social Security program as a “socialist” endeavor, will call for the United States to adopt the so-called second Bill of Rights that Roosevelt proposed in his 1944 State of the Union address to Congress. Roosevelt proposed guaranteeing the right to “a useful and remunerative job” for laborers, farmers and others to earn an adequate wage; housing; medical care; education; social security; and freedom from unfair competition and monopolies.
“All of these rights spell security,” Roosevelt said. “And after this war is won, we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.” (He died the following year.)
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/19/bernie-sanders-to-invoke-roosevelt-in-speech-defining-his-vision-of-democratic-socialism/
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