'Socialist' label hasn't slowed Bernie Sanders, but his march gives some Texas Democrats heartburn - The Dallas Morning News

HOUSTON – Sen. Bernie Sanders’ decisive win in Nevada on Saturday, and his surprising ability to expand beyond a base of idealistic youth for whom “socialist” isn’t a disqualifying epithet, is forcing Democrats to ponder an uncertain future.

The longer Sanders lasts as the front-runner, the harder it gets for other Democrats to shake off the label. As the Vermont senator packs arenas, courting “brothers and sisters” in the political revolution and cementing his front-runner status, nationally and in Texas, traditional Texas Democrats watch with growing alarm.

Putting a democratic socialist at the top of the ticket, they say, will hamper efforts to nab control of the Legislature and build on dramatic gains made last year, when Democrats nearly ended a 25-year GOP monopoly on statewide offices.

“It’s pretty clear that a more center-left nominee would be an easier haul for Texas Democrats than a far left nominee,” said Harold Cook, an Austin-based Democratic strategist. “That is the Republican play, led by Trump. They’re going to try to paint every Democrat everywhere as a socialist. And that’s 100% thanks to Bernie Sanders that Democrats are going to have to fight that off.”

Thousands of Texans packed a University of Houston arena to feel the Bern on Sunday, many wearing red T-shirts proudly proclaiming themselves democratic socialists.

“The oppressors are not afraid of any other campaign more than this one,” actor Kendrick Sampson of The Vampire Diaries told his hometown crowd, warming them up by lauding the “liberation” candidate who is ushering in a “political revolution” – rhetoric of a sort not heard at other Democrats’ rallies.

“We won the popular vote in Iowa. We won the New Hampshire primary. We won the Nevada caucus, and don’t tell anybody this—we’re going to win here in Texas,” Sanders boasted. “This state maybe more than any other state has the possibility of transforming this country.”

As Sanders’ win in Nevada became clear, rival Pete Buttigieg, the former South Bend, Ind., mayor, issued a dire warning that his ascent threatens disaster for Democrats, because his antagonism toward capitalism alienates most Americans.

“Before we rush to nominate Senator Sanders... let’s take a sober look at the consequences,” he pleaded. “The only way to truly deliver any of the progressive changes we care about is to be a nominee who actually gives a damn about the effect you are having, from the top of the ticket, on those crucial, front-line House and Senate Democrats running to win, who we need to win, to make sure our agenda is more than just words on a page.”

The concerns are shared in places like Tarrant County, where Democrats made huge gains in 2018.

Sen. Ted Cruz lost the longtime GOP stronghold to challenger Beto O’Rourke, a reversal that put a huge scare into Republicans.

“Whoever the nominee is, we’ll build on gains here,” said U.S. Rep. Marc Veasey, a Fort Worth Democrat who supports former vice president Joe Biden.

But that’s largely because people are “disgusted” by Trump’s disregard for the rule of law and presidential decorum, he said; a Sanders nomination would provide a headwind.

“There’s concern. There’s definitely concern about the embracing of a democratic socialist. People old enough to remember the Cold War, when they think of the word `socialist,’ it’s not very positive,” Veasey said.

In the Sanders camp, such concerns are seen as overblown.

“I call them fraidy-cat Democrats,” said Texas campaign co-chair Jim Hightower, the progressive activist and former Texas agriculture commissioner. “They’re afraid of their own principles. They’re afraid of their own party. This is the party of Franklin Roosevelt and Eleanor Roosevelt.”

He recalled FDR’s New Deal push for wage and hour laws, a Social Security safety net and collective bargaining rights –“things that would cause these latter day Democrats to have fainting spells.”

Texas, he noted, ranks at the bottom on health care access, and polls show widespread support for Medicare for All, not to mention Social Security and Medicare as they currently exist.

“They call them socialist, but they’re social programs,” Hightower said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders campaigns at the University of Houston on February 23, 2020.(Drew Angerer / Getty Images)

Picking Biden, Buttigieg or “certainly Bloomberg” would be far more devastating for Democrats than picking Sanders, he warned.

“They are so conservative and so don’t-rock the boat-corporatist that people won’t turn out to vote for them. If you don’t talk about the working day needs of working people in bold terms, they’re not going to bother to vote,” he said.

Cook, the Democratic strategist, takes issue with the boast that Sanders will boost turnout, noting that voter participation this month in Iowa and New Hampshire was nothing special.

In the state house, Democrats need a net gain of nine seats in November to wrest control. Many of the seats they picked up in 2018 will be tough to defend. All the low-hanging fruit is gone. To win, they’ll need to attract voters who don’t usually opt for Democrats.

“The farther left you go, the faster you cut yourself off from voters in the middle,” Cook said.

Supporters of Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders cheer during a rally at the University in Houston on February 23, 2020.(MARK FELIX / AFP via Getty Images)

It’s a concern shared by Faith Dignazio, 44, a teacher from Sugar Land who brought her son, a Sanders backer, to the Houston rally, though she voted early for Biden.

“I’m totally liberal. But I just want someone who can win" and help win the Legislature, she said. Plus, her husband and mom voted for Trump.

“They can get behind Biden. Even Warren and Amy. But they legit told me last week there’s no way I’m voting for a socialist. It’s not even that Bernie’s that socialist, but he’s got that label.”

If Biden fizzles, she added, "I’m feeling like I’ve got to decide whether I can stomach Bloomberg, or back Bernie, who will screw up our chances of flipping the state House.”

Maldini Sakah, 21, a senior accounting major at UH whose parents live in Dallas, shrugged off the use of “socialism” to demonize Sanders as he weighs between him and Sen. Elizabeth Warren.

“That’s so old-fashioned. This is not the 1980s,” he said. “They try to scare you with the term but I think most Americans now understand what socialism involves. I don’t think it’s off-putting.”

Danielle Underferth, 49, a hospital administrator, and her significant other, Patrick King, 59, a data science professor at UH downtown, were weighing between Sanders and Sen. Amy Klobuchar, and both questioned Sanders’ viability.

“The last election was a shocker. I feel like we just don’t know how people would react,” Underferth said.

“Bernie’s far enough left and his youth appeal could be enough to spark turnout. But I’m afraid that we’d lose—that label alone could be enough to negate his upsides,” King said.

Trump seems to relish the prospect of a Sanders nomination, simultaneously using his rise to tar all Democrats as socialists while barely concealing his pleasure at the prospect.

“Democrats are treating Bernie Sanders very unfairly,” Trump said at the White House on Sunday morning a he left for India, accusing anti-Sanders Democrats of planting Friday’s news reports that U.S. spy agencies see Russia trying to abet the Sanders candidacy. “He had a great victory yesterday, but … you can see the handwriting on the wall."

Unlike Trump, who openly invited Russia to hack and release Hillary Clinton’s emails during the 2016 campaign, Sanders unequivocally condemned such meddling.

On trade, foreign policy, military deployments and his demands for free college and health care for all, Sanders is an outlier in the Democratic field.

Trump has called him a communist. At the Last Vegas debate Wednesday night, where Sanders stood by his assertion that billionaires should not exist, so did former New York mayor Mike Bloomberg.

Sanders took umbrage, distancing himself from authoritarian, Soviet-style communism and emphasizing the Scandinavian version of a democracy with high taxes that support universal health care and a generous social safety net.

As Texas Republicans see it, the Democrats’ squirming is futile because Sanders’ ideals have already infiltrated the party’s agenda.

“While Sanders proudly wears the socialist name and talks about his love for communism and the Soviet Union and every other communist country he can find, the actual policies being advanced by every single Democrat contender for the presidency are identically socialist,” said Texas GOP chairman James Dickey. “The policies they're advancing are the exact policies that have turned Venezuela from a success into a nightmare, that nearly destroyed what is now Russia, that has failed everywhere they’ve been tried.”

He’s confident that Texas will remain a GOP stronghold, because Trump’s approval ratings have improved and the party has stepped up its ground game since 2018, when Cruz squeaked to a second term by just 2.6 points.

“It’s not that Bernie would not be a huge drag,” Dickey said. But even without him as the nominee, Democrats are “perfectly fine with the idea of a major contender for their nomination being a self-described socialist – that’s their problem.”

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