LETTER TO THE EDITOR: Name-calling part of Republicans’ dishonest political strategy’

To the Editor:

I would like to know what percentage of national Democrats have ever actually read Paul Krugman’s article in “The New York Times” titled “Bernie Sanders Isn’t A Socialist.”

It can be found online.

Of those who have, why do some of them still call themselves “Democratic Socialists” when Krugman does an excellent job of showing that they are actually “Social Democrats” and not truly “Socialists” at all?

How do they deal with the fact that he won the 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics in 2008?

Isn’t it fair and reasonable to suggest that someone who won that award knows what a true socialist is and is not? I think it’s very reasonable for him to be believed and to be seen as credible.

I would like to ask this of all Democrats, but I would not want anyone to be offended or to believe that I am questioning their knowledge or intelligence. The problem here is that I believe that we are probably going to lose the 2022 mid-term elections largely because of this issue and being called names like “Socialists” and “Marxists” by Republicans because those terms scare and frighten many Americans and lose a lot of votes for Democrats. Many Americans erroneously believe that the Democrats want to abolish Capitalism, and it scares them.

Krugman calls this name-calling strategy by the Republicans a “dishonest political strategy” that is just one example of how they operate “out of bad faith.”

Why can’t Democrats simply say that what they want is “a more humane, just and caring capitalism?” That won’t lose us many votes.

— Stewart B. Epstein

Rochester, N.Y.