Politics
Election 2012: Obama a socialist? Many scoff, but claim persists
The new French president, Francois Hollande, is a Socialist, and most of Western Europe adheres to socialist-style policies that endure under a variety of governing parties.
Canada, which resembles the U.S. in so many ways, has a universal health care system and its main opposition party, the New Democrats, is union-backed and has socialist roots.
One of the few contemporary U.S. politicians to embrace the socialist label is Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. He formally lists himself as an independent, but throughout his career, including stints as a mayor and House member, he’s described himself as a democratic socialist.
“Branding someone as a socialist has become the slur du jour by leading lights of the American right from Newt Gingrich to Rush Limbaugh,” Sanders said in 2009. “If we could get beyond such nonsense, I think this country could use a good debate about what goes on here compared to places with a long social-democratic tradition like Sweden, Norway and Finland, where, by and large, the middle class has a far higher standard of living than we do.”
The roots of socialism in America can be traced to the arrival of German immigrants in the 1850s, according to Rutgers University professor Norman Markowitz, who teaches the history of socialism and communism.
The Socialist Party of America grew significantly in the early 20th century under the leadership of union organizer Eugene V. Debs, electing a congressman and dozens of mayors. Debs ran for president five times, getting more than 913,000 votes in 1920, the party’s high-water mark. (At the time, Debs was in prison on charges that he had urged resistance to the draft during World War I.)
The party’s following eroded during the 1920s, and Debs was succeeded as leader by Norman Thomas, a Presbyterian minister in New York. During the Great Depression, Thomas received 892,000 votes in the 1932 presidential election as Franklin Roosevelt won the first of his four victories.
