Thread by @davidharsanyi

Reminder that @BernieSanders, who might well win the Dem nomination, once said these words in this order: "the American dream is more apt to be realized in Venezuela" than the United States. (h/t @ReaganBattalion). He was not alone.

@BernieSanders @ReaganBattalion I'm not even talking about Sean Penn, Michael Moore or Oliver Stone. Here's the aspiring leader of Great Britain, @jeremycorbyn:

https://twitter.com/jeremycorbyn/status/309065744954580992

@BernieSanders @ReaganBattalion @jeremycorbyn Progressive hero Naomi Klein praised Hugo Chavez's "21st Century Socialism" as "a zone of relative economic calm and predictability."
thenation.com/article/latin-…

@BernieSanders @ReaganBattalion @jeremycorbyn David Sirota literally wrote a piece headlined “Hugo Chavez’s economic miracle.” salon.com/2013/03/06/hug…

Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz? Big fan. He argued that Chavez's socialism would “bring education and health benefits to the poor" & ...
city-journal.org/joseph-stiglit…

"strive for economic policies that not only bring higher growth but also ensure that the fruits of the growth are more widely shared.”

I'm sure, he, and many others like him, will be back at the 92nd st Y lecturing about the importance of wealth redistribution.

Oh look here's Mark Weisbrot, co-Director of the often quoted Center for Economic and Policy Research praising Chavez-style socialism.

"Predicting a Venezuelan apocalypse won't make it happen," he says!

theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

"As illness ends Hugo Chávez’s rule in Venezuela, what will his legacy be? Richard Gott argues he brought hope to a continent."

newstatesman.com/world-affairs/…

Jimmy Carter: Chavez brought "profound changes to his country to benefit especially those people who had felt neglected and marginalized,"

foxnews.com/politics/carte…

As it turns out free market economists were the ones who got it right again.

Now, I'm not so sure about that initial Bernie quote. Apparently it was on his site but written by someone else?
quillette.com/2018/03/10/san…

I don't see that it's been corrected in other sources.

(So Bernie featured those words on his site, he didn't say them: sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/must-…)

Which is bad, though not as bad.