Thread by @AlexandraErin

What she means is that she and her fellow scaremongers will have to come up with new lies if we have a president who enacts the popular policy positions they use Red Scare propaganda to convince people to vote against, in lieu of offering any solutions to vote for.

https://twitter.com/LizMair/status/1231373299290181634

If we get universal healthcare and a social safety net and not only is the free market not destroyed but we are all freer, more secure, and more prosperous, that leaves @LizMair and people like her with nothing to make their case for continued economic authoritarianism.

Today they can tell us, "Oh, you think you're broke now? You think you're being denied healthcare now? You think you are at the mercy of the powerful now? Well all the solutions to these things are SOCIALISM which means if you accept them we will be the new Stalinist USSR."

If we the people have four years to see that adding social features to a market economy doesn't result in tanks on the streets (which we have, thanks to the police) and gulags (in the most incarcerated country, mind you), the GOP is finished. They have little left to sell.

The whole GOP project at this point is based around perpetuating power for the powerful. They've stopped offering people solutions to problems - they demonize all attempts to do so as being the end of freedom and democracy.

They run on manufactured outrage and trumped-up culture wars, shriek about dead babies and demons, and use every ounce of power they get to change the system so they can hold onto it no matter how unpopular they become.

And their defense against the fact that their opponents consistently run on topics that are consistently popular (healthcare reform! immigration reform!) is to scaremonger, to make people who cheer for these ideas in the abstract fear them in the concrete.

And the GOP is good at this! This is part of why I'm not cocky about how consistently every single Democrat beats Trump in head-to-head polling. The US electorate loves voting for Democrats right up until there's an election. A Generic Democrat is our most beloved leader!

But as soon as there's an actual candidate, that's when the GOP strategy kicks into high gear, and soon some -- possibly too many -- of the same people who said they would vote for whoever are going, "Hmm, isn't something off about them? Where there's smoke, there's fire."

Show a story is false or misleading and two more will take its place, and no matter how fast we play whack-a-mole the impression is left behind that the candidate is skeezy enough to have these stories told about them.

(Never hurts the GOP because no one expects better of them.)

Some people say that Democrats are Communist babykillers, some say they want to give us healthcare. People who aren't part of the GOP cult or in on the GOP grift, by and large, want to think of themselves as fair and open-minded so they assume the truth is somewhere in the middle

A big part of the demonization involves demonizing the policy solutions Democrats offer. Immigration reform? Very popular. Call it "open borders" and claim that Democrats don't want us to have a country.

Nobody running for the Democratic candidacy is in favor of open borders. Nobody whose position is close to that was ever close to being a viable candidate.

Healthcare reform? Literally everybody knows we need it, which is why the Republicans, who aren't interested in providing it, keep promising a nebulous "& Replace" in their repeal plans for the last attempt. Single payer and even specifically M4A have been growing in popularity.

So they call it "socialism", which in fairness to them, so do some of its proponents. But they want us to think that this "socialism" means an end to free enterprise, means a centrally planned economy where the government controls the means of production, and everything else.

It won't be an immediate clean sweep on the GOP's viability if they lose to someone like Sanders or Warren, because they do have multiple prongs of attack, they can change up strategy, and they are, of course, allowed to just lie about what's happening. (And frequently do.)

But just look at how many of the wretched "NeverTrumpers" are running back to Donald at the time when the optics look the absolute worst for their Noble Defenders of the Republic schtick.

They see Sanders as an existential threat... to the effectiveness of their politics.

I would prefer if Warren were the nominee and not Sanders, but I'm not the least bit cheered by these attacks on his campaign nor am I tempted to try to leverage them to argue for President Warren.

For many reasons. But also? If she were leading, they'd say it of her.

Frankly, if Pete Buttigieg had a sustaining lead we'd start hearing about how his public option is communism, too, even if the histrionics were at a lower pitch.

If Bloomberg clinches it, he, too, will be a socialist.

Because even if they are voting for Bloomberg, they will want to push him to the right, discourage him from any slight gesture to the left, pre-discredit any attempts he makes to break with them for whatever reason.

So he'll be a socialist.

They're going to call any Democrat who wins the nomination a socialist because even Bloomberg is running on the idea of solutions, and to the GOP, the function of government is to enrich and protect the rich and powerful. A government that works for the people is anathema.

Reagan explicitly ran on the notion that the government can only be a source of problems, never solutions, so the best thing a public servant can do is get between the people and the Great Beast Government.

And in the meantime, they're using the apparatus of government that they decry as evil to pay money to themselves and friends, to protect their personal and business interests, to punish their enemies, to wage the culture wars that keep their base enraged and engaged.

So, yeah. They are scared of a progressive victory in November. They are terrified of it.

And they know that a "radical" like Bernie can win. If they thought he was a bad choice for leading the party to victory, they wouldn't be begging us not to vote for him.

Bernie's not even that radical, of course. Nobody who is running on the same basic ideas he had forty years ago could be that radical. His propositions aren't viewed as particularly far left in the rest of the world. More like the basic apparatus of a functioning country.

But it's harder to control and exploit people who are educated, secure, well-fed, and sheltered. It's harder to control people who aren't worried about how they'll survive cancer, or even a bad ear infection. It's harder to control people who can change jobs without fear of dying

So yes, they fear him. They fear a populace that doesn't have to beg the powerful for survival.

They tell us that Trump is an existential crisis and must be defeated at all cost, but they're not willing to give up the foundation of their control over society.

This is a long thread because I am so tired that the only way I can function is too much caffeine, but I will tell you the biggest thing to takeaway from this:

Republicans 100% believe that Bernie Sanders can win the nomination and the presidency. It's a real possibility to them

I would rather have Warren and I hope the momentum showing in her post-debate polling and the non-early Nevada voting carries her forward through the rest of the contests, but: the sky is the limit. Nobody in the race is too radical to win. Conservative fear confirms this.

Thanks for reading to the end. If you got some insight or hope from this, please tip your weird Twitter pundit. paypal.me/alexandraerin