Democrat John Hickenlooper:
“Socialism is not the answer”
“We shouldn’t try to achieve universal coverage by removing private insurance from 150 million Americans”
“We shouldn’t try to tackle climate change by guaranteeing every American a gov job”
Crowd boos loudly each time pic.twitter.com/Q3Oosgd8Wf
— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) June 1, 2019
How far left is the Democratic Party drifting?
When 2020 presidential candidate John Hickenlooper declared Saturday at the California Democratic Party State Convention that “socialism is not the answer,” he was met with a loud chorus of boos, the Gateway Pundit reported.
“If we want to beat Donald Trump and achieve big progressive goals, socialism is not the answer,” said the former Colorado governor.
Amid the boos, Hickenlooper went on to point out he was “re-elected in a purple state in 2014, one of the worst years for Democrats in a quarter century.”
As the booing continued, he interrupted himself and remarked to the gathering of California Democrats: “You know, if we’re not careful we’re going to end up helping to re-elect the worst president in American history.”
That didn’t help, and he elicited more boos when he said universal health coverage shouldn’t be achieved by “removing private insurance from 150 million Americans” and climate change shouldn’t be addressed by “guaranteeing every American a government job.”
While the Democratic activists at the California convention aren’t necessarily a representative sample of the party, the success in 2016 of self-described “democratic socialist” Sen. Bernie Sanders, who honeymooned in the Soviet Union, clearly has helped move the party’s base further left.
Sanders — who some believe might have won if not for the party’s “superdelegate” system — was the runner-up to Hillary Clinton in the 2016 party presidential primary. And he trails only the establishment favorite in the 2020 campaign, former Vice President Joe Biden.
Though he insists his socialist ideal is Sweden, Sanders campaigned for the Socialist Workers Party in the 1980 and 1984 presidential campaigns and was investigated by the FBI for his ties to the Marxist group, the Washington Examiner reported last week.
In March, a CNN investigation found that when Sanders first ran for the Senate in the 1970s, he advocated full-blown socialist policies such as nationalizing major industries, including energy companies, factories and banks. And he campaigned for a 100 percent income tax for the wealthiest Americans.
