Chris Woodward
Speaking to a crowded room last week at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., the self-described socialist said economic rights are human rights.
"That is what I mean by Democratic socialism," Sanders declared. "When Trump attacks socialism, I am reminded again of what Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr said: ‘This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor.’ That is the difference between Donald Trump and me. He believes in corporate socialism for the rich and powerful. I believe in a democratic socialism that works for the working families of this country."
Merrill Matthews, Ph.D. of the Institute for Policy Innovation says the reason people applaud this message is because "it sounds much better than it actually works out in experience."
"One of the reasons why I think Florida Democrats were critical of Bernie Sanders for not criticizing Nicolas Maduro is because so many Florida Democrats came from that situation," Matthews tells OneNewsNow. "They're from Cuba; some of them are from Venezuela and so forth. They've seen the real impact of socialism, not just the dream of it."
Matthews adds that socialists have a pattern of reluctance to criticize other socialists who had governments, regardless of how aggressive and tyrannical they are.
"So you can just imagine if a person who was considered on the right was doing what we're seeing in Venezuela. Bernie Sanders would be a vocal critic," says Matthews, co-author of On The Edge: America Faces The Entitlements Cliff. " In fact, he criticized the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia and others as oligarchs and dictators and other things, but he's but very reluctant to do it for people who are also self-proclaimed socialists, and it's a pattern we've seen for more than a century.