I went to shitty public schools and spend all my time reading about communism instead of US government. Anyway I got to thinking about how some liberals say communism isn’t possible in the US, but is democratic socialism even possible? Would a president like Bernie Sanders actually have the power to implement any progressive policies or would they just get blocked? It feels like no part of US government has any legitimacy any more other than the military because it makes the oligarchs money. So I find it hard to believe an old guy could just completely change our economy when trump wasn’t even able to build a wall.
The US has blocked social democrats from positions of power multiple times, not the least of which was the democratic national convention blocking sanders (an imperialist socdem in 2016), and henry wallace (an anti-imperialist socdem) in the 1930s. Both of these candidates were the most popular of the bunch, but the DNC is a private organization and can hand pick who it wants.
And you’re right, even if a socdem was elected, they can’t do anything: the US is a bourgeois democracy ( ie a capitalist dictatorship ), and capital controls and stands above the political system.
Right…liberals always point to FDR as the guy who was able to pass progressive policies, but he was kind of at the mercy of a strong working class and it was during a time when the US government had some power over capital. I guess that’s why all the main issues in the US are cultural and rarely affect us economically.
FDR’s policy were tolerated as a foil to the USSR where workers were vastly more appreciated and people in the rest of the world were waking to the fact that it’s possible for the government to prioritise the working class.
And he was nearly couped for even such mild socdem program.
The one who actually was able of implementing progressive reforms, huey long, was murdered by his political enemies. Even FDR was almost killed in a assasination attempt. Fucking JFK got his brains splattered because he wanted to cut CIA/FBI power. If you have power on the US and you try to use it even if just a little against the sistem, you get cutted out by the sistem.