Don’t tell me words don’t matter.

—President Barack Obama, 2008

“Would you kindly clarify your statements that Bernie Sanders self-identifies as a socialist? He says ‘democratic socialist.’ There is a whopping difference.” That note, and a few like it, prompted PolitiFact to explain to the befuddled Berniecrat that his claim made no more sense than saying, This is a Honeycrisp apple, not an apple; there is a whopping difference.

I was not surprised. Sanders’ famous democratic socialism speech from late 2015 was a masterpiece of misdirection. He says what democratic socialism means to him nine times but never mentions plain “socialism,” his traditional label, and never mentions what every other socialist means by democratic socialism. He talks about Democrats he admires but never mentions a socialist, not even Eugene V. Debs, whose portrait hung in his Senate office for years. And Sanders’ campaign ignored multiple requests from PolitiFact for a comment on the difference.

Sanders is clearly trying to mislead his followers. And he is succeeding. What is he up to? And what are the consequences for the Democrats?

What I will show is that he has deliberately misinformed his followers about democratic socialism by pretending it’s just FDR liberalism — the New Deal and FDR’s Second Bill of Rights. And he has done this with the hope that his followers can later be converted to real socialism. So far, he has induced 50,000 of them to join a Marxist, socialist organization. And you can see from the following tweet that at least 1,500 of them, and likely many more. now think that even “communism is good.”

Is Sanders a Socialist?

It might seem obvious that Sanders is a socialist. He has a lifelong socialist track record and, as the wildly popular podcaster Joe Rogan tweeted, “He’s been insanely consistent his entire life.” In spite of this, many recent op-eds, such as Paul Krugman’s “Bernie Sanders Isn’t a Socialist: But he plays one on TV,” have claimed he’s not.

Krugman’s point is that Sanders is not running on socialist policies. He’s right about that. As Chapter 5 shows, he’s running on FDR liberalism. Even Joseph Schwartz, Vice-Chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, agrees. Schwartz did some searching and the most recent socialist quote from Sanders that he could find was the one about how people should not have to “work as semi-slaves” for capitalists. That’s from clear back in 1985. Schwartz couldn’t find him saying anything socialist since then.

This had me puzzled for years. Sanders doesn’t mind misleading people, but he does not like to tell lies, and he’s an expert in socialism. In 2009, he posted on his Senate website that he doubted that “there are any other socialists in all of the Congress.” In November 2016 he labeled himself a straight-up socialist four times in his book, Our Revolution. How could he not be a real socialist? But if he was one, how could he go for 35 years without saying anything clearly socialist?

Sanders has been running for office as a socialist for fifty years, and one thing he learned long ago is that talking about what socialism really means doesn’t help you win. And talking about genuine socialist policies also doesn’t help. So his strategy has become one of making people angry at the elite and talking about non-socialist reform policies that might improve capitalism.

You don’t have to take my word for the fact that real socialists often advance their agenda by pushing non-socialist reforms in ways that heightens class conflict. Meagan Day, a leading voice at Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), tells us:

“Here’s the truth: In the long run, democratic socialists want to end capitalism. And we want to do that by pursuing a reform agenda today in an effort to revive a politics focused on class hierarchy and inequality in the United States [emphases added].”

When she says “reform agenda,” she means the kind of non-socialist policies Sanders is advocating. Almost as if in answer to Krugman’s argument, she writes in the DSA’s Socialist Forum that “revolutionary socialists have historically been very focused on the proper integration of reform campaigns into revolutionary strategy.” And in case you’re unclear on the point of a democratic-socialist revolution, she explains,

Social democratic reforms like Medicare-for-all are, in the eyes of DSA, part of the long, uneven process of building that support, and eventually overthrowing capitalism.

So Sanders hasn’t flip-flopped; he still is a socialist. And he wants to convert others to real, capitalism-free, Marxist socialism. But he does that indirectly, without advocating actual socialist policies, which he knows would put people off. Instead, he advocates a “reform agenda,” just as Meagan Day suggests.

This misleading indirect approach is an old one on the left. The Communist Party USA used it very effectively in the 1930s. But when people eventually found out what communism was, they realized they’d been duped, and they left the party in droves.

What’s DSA?

DSA is the Marxist training camp for real socialism, and Sanders is their recruiting officer. He is not a member, but his views and aspirations align far more closely with DSA’s than with the Democrats. They backed Sanders’ first run for the Senate in 2006, and he gave the keynote address at their 2007 national convention. He sought and gained their blessing before he ran for president in 2015.

The DSA’s Honorary Chairman, Cornell West, is one of Sanders’ closest advisors, and Sanders appointed him to the Democratic Platform Committee in 2016. West then defected to socialist Jill Stein to help her attack Clinton. So when asked on MSNBC, Sanders refused to tell his supporters to vote for Clinton, not Stein. As a result Stein got a million more votes in 2016 than in 2012. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has joined the DSA along with fellow “Squad” member Rashida Tlaib.

Sanders’ successes in the 2016 primaries pushed the DSA’s membership from about 6,200 to about 56,000 in early 2020. These are now dues-paying members of a political organization that “will not be endorsing Biden” but will be criticizing him.

Is the DSA a Marxist socialist organization? The DSA launched a new quarterly publication, Socialist Forum, in the fall of 2018 with ten articles by influential members.

They discussed the “overthrow of capitalism,” how “Marxist theory is indispensable,” how Bernie was fomenting “class struggle on a massive scale,” how “The Russian Revolution” is a guide to “organizing for the revolution in the U.S.,” what Marx had to say about “subverting the [U.S.] economic base” and how “Marx and Engels” gave us the “framework for understanding capitalist economics.” Another of the authors has written a “Marxist analysis” of the Nicaraguan revolution.

All ten papers are written from a Marxist perspective and make it clear that the DSA is a Marxist organization trying to end capitalism. The DSA knows Bernie’s program is not socialist, but they appreciate how “Bernie Sanders has led the charge on Medicare for All and has done a remarkably effective job in linking the demand to the need for class struggle on a massive scale.”

DSA also sees calling his reform policies “democratic socialism” as a great way to recruit new DSA members. They are busy converting them to real socialism without them knowing where they’re headed. Sanders is fully aware of this and is complicit in it.

How Does This Help Trump?

Thanks to Sanders, we now have almost half of the Democratic Party believing that some kind of socialist revolution is a good idea, with no clear idea what that means. In particular, they don’t know that real socialists, like Sanders and the DSA leadership, intend to “overthrow capitalism.”

The right-wing press loves reporting such things. And with all the hype about the Democrats moving left, it’s hard to escape the charge that they really are headed toward the overthrow of capitalism.

Another danger is that Biden will be harmed by the new Democratic brand — half liberal capitalism, half radical socialism. Biden is already under attack for being a socialist as we knew he would be. But being pushed to align with the same policies that proved unpopular in the 2020 primaries and the 2018 House races would amplify the negative impact of the new Democratic flirtation with “socialism.”

The impact will be to discourage the type of suburban swing voters who helped us win in 2018 and to act as a red flag for Trump’s base. And in this era of negative partisanship, that’s the sort of thing that really fires them up.

Similarly, Scott Jennings, an adviser to Mitch McConnell, thought Trump’s line on “Biden being a tool of the radical left” was his most effective message at his June Oklahoma Rally “because it will resonate with wobbly suburbanites.”

Furthermore, many of the new “democratic socialists” will see Biden as not a democratic socialist and hence think he’s opposed to FDR liberalism. So they will condemn him even though Biden is a good FDR liberal, just as they are.