Bernie Sanders isn't as radical as critics think, says the Delaware Supreme Court's chief justice.

The majority of America's largest companies are incorporated in Delaware, and its Supreme Court chief justice, Leo E. Strine, Jr., is a highly influential and outspoken voice on corporate law.

Strine said at a recent CEO conference that those who dismiss presidential candidate Bernie Sanders as a communist are ignorant of the markets and history.

He likened Sanders' policies to those in FDR's New Deal, and said New Deal democracy is the model that allowed the US and its allies to thrive in the 20th century.

This article is part of Business Insider's ongoing series on Better Capitalism.

Feb 28, 2019

Excerpt:

At the recent CECP CEO Investor Forum in New York, which focused on CEOs moving beyond toxic "short-termism," Strine said that growth is largely captured by the country's wealthiest. He explained that this can only be changed on a structural level if Republicans and centrist Democrats start supporting significant changes, and look to the past.

He pointed to the way some Americans talk about Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running as a Democratic presidential candidate. "When people talk Bernie Sanders as if he's a communist, they show a profound ignorance" of the market and of history, Strine said. He added that while he doesn't agree with all of Sanders' proposals, they're not actually radical from a historical or global perspective. Per Strine, Sanders is actually a centrist by the standards of some of our closest and most prosperous European allies.

"There is profound economic insecurity. That is the sort of thing that happened in the late '20s and 1930s and that we overcame with New Deal democracy, which became a role model for market dynamism that was tempered by fairness for everybody," Strine said.

Sanders' ideology is not far removed from Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal vision, and Strine suggested Americans need to shed the Cold War mindset that intensified alongside the rise of neoliberalism in the late 1970s.

https://www.businessinsider.com/delaware-chief-justice-leo-strine-says-bernie-sanders-is-not-radical-2019-2