Here's an example of the kind of thing that Sanders will have to confront, and the kinds of defenses people like me will have to offer: Sanders's history of being relatively soft on the Venezuela regime 1/
As it happens, I've been doing a lot of homework on Venezuela, for nonpolitical reasons: it's replacing Zimbabwe as the motivating example of hyperinflation in the Krugman/Wells textbook 2/
No question that Venezuela is currently a nightmare, and that Maduro is a thug. But the story behind the situation is more complicated than "socialism bad" 3/
The background is that Venezuela has been a corrupt petrostate as far back as anyone can remember. Before Hugo Chavez came to power, however, the benefits of oil wealth flowed disproportionately to a wealthy elite 4/
Chavez redirected some of the money to social programs, and for a number of years the poor and working class actually did see significant benefits. But a recurring problem of regimes following heterodox policies is not knowing when to stop 5/
Chavez died in 2013, and Maduro, his successor, soon confronted a crisis, mainly due to plunging world oil prices. And we wasn't willing or able to make hard choices. Instead, he tried to fill the budget gap by printing money 6/
That's the classic recipe for hyperinflation, and Maduro made it worse by trying to suppress inflation with price controls. Hence the economic and political disaster 7/
Now, you can argue that this nightmare was always immanent in Chavismo, even during the good years, which may well be true. And it's definitely true that no U.S. politician with national ambitions should ever make excuses for an authoritarian regime 8/
But the real story is a lot more complicated than "Sanders wants America to have a socialist regime like Venezuela" No, he doesn't. But he has laid himself wide open to that kind of smear 9/
