but I wonder if the author is a conservative. His conclusion is that expanded government and higher taxes don’t work. That’s Reaganism and goes against what even moderate Democrats believe.

Has to be, same for the capitalist/for-profit MfA. Sanders may delude himself about many things, about us for sure, but he knows that he loathes and despises capitalism and all who support it, and he knows that democratic socialism is about communal ownership. Incremental change is seen as necessary to get people to give up their rights and into the deep water in small steps, and most collective control is to be localized instead of all in one central capital, but that's all.

That, of course, is part of the problem with trying to convince people that it's a winning strategy. There's nowhere that it's been successfully implemented, so Sweden and others become inaccurate placeholders.

"inaccurate placeholders." Sanders is trying to use them to trick people into voting for them/him -- a person who actually despises their capitalism-based systems.

Europe's social democracies and the U.S.'s capitalism-based systems are the same. The difference is that U.S. has socialized only one big national service, the VA, all others remaining capitalism-based, while they each have socialized more national services.

By doing that, Europe's "social democracies" successfully barred wannabe revolutionaries like Sanders from turning most of Europe into failed socialist states. And for that reason they are a big obstruction to the anti-capitalism dreams of democratic socialists.

Try, try again. But not with the U.S.

Sanders should purchase and socialize a "local" yogurt factory and see if he can make a go of that.

little of which has much of anything to do with anything Sanders is talking about.

Socialism always comes down to the means of production, which, in all modern societies, has pretty well worked out where the common or the capitalist is more efficient.

Other than that, the pesky little details like putting workers on corporate boards, wage and price controls, and other stuff to help manage the economy tend to end up irrelevant and not really do what they planned to do.

Just coming up with another wealth adjusting or welfare plan, no matter how well-intentioned or how well it works, is not socialism of any sort.

It’s best to always error on the side of compassion and social justice for the suffering.

We'll wait. The problem is, there aren't any because it's false.

How are we supposed to explain it to voters if Sanders doesn't even know? He's been at this for five years, and we're no closer to voters understanding it than we were in 2015.

Of course, the real problem is that he labelled himself inaccurately as a socialist decades ago and now he's stuck with it. Tacking on "democratic" didn't help. He (and we) now have to convince people that democratic socialism is really regulated capitalism, as Warren and others have described what progressives really want, outside of the die-hard socialists like the DSA. Had Sanders just dumped the inaccurate socialism label years ago, we wouldn't have this problem.

What’s working for whom is what I’m concerned with.

Ask Denmark, a country Sanders frequently says is socialist.

https://www.vox.com/2015/10/31/9650030/denmark-prime-minister-bernie-sanders

https://thehill.com/opinion/finance/402682-nordic-nations-are-not-socialist-theyre-free-trade-lovers

He's simply wrong.

long before I joined DU. It drives me bonkers. We are NOT socialists, the mere suggestion is ludicrous. The actual socialist party here (now known as Vänsterpartiet, ie The Left Party) has never been in an actual full government with the Social Democrats and/or the Greens ie. Miljöpartiet de gröna) The closest they come are confidence-and-supply agreements on occasion.

Glad to see this bollocks being slapped down some more. The discrediting of these Sanderite falsehoods needs to continue ad infinitum.

Sanders imagination. Has there ever been a non-authoritarian socialist state? Perhaps Bernie believes that Cuba's one party dictatorship is an example of 'democratic socialism'.

He needs to toss in the towel. He can't and hasn't built a coalition. All he's done is built is a shrine to himself and his bourgiouse lake house.