Two “scary socialists” are talking about health care, housing, and democracy like grown-ups. The only people panicking are the ones profiting off your back.

For forty years, Republicans have sold us the same used car: cut taxes on the rich and the money will magically trickle down to you.

The rich are not “trickling.” They’re not even raining. They are drowning in money — record profits, record CEO pay, billionaire rocket rides — while most Americans are wondering if they can afford groceries and their prescriptions this week.

Meanwhile, two of the most demonized politicians in America — Bernie Sanders and New York Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani — are doing something almost no one on cable news bothers with anymore: they’re offering concrete solutions. Line-itemed. Costed out. Tied to real-world outcomes like “you can go to the doctor” and “you don’t get evicted.”

So let’s ask the impolite question:

How’s that drip-drip-drip theory working out for your economic security — and why are the people with actual answers the ones being called dangerous?

This isn’t a story about abstract “democratic socialism” in the Fox News sense. It’s about what happens when people like Bernie and Zohran actually put their agenda on the table — and why Americans like it a lot more than the consultants want you to know.

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The Big Con: “There Is No Alternative”

Since the Reagan era, we’ve been living inside a story:

• Government is bad.

• Markets are magic.

• Rich people are job creators and therefore sacred.

• If things suck, it’s your fault for not working hard enough.

Under that story, the script never changes:

• Cut taxes on the wealthy and corporations.

• Deregulate everything that moves.

• Privatize public goods.

• Tell people we “can’t afford” healthcare, housing, childcare, or paid leave.

• And that tired old Republican BS: If you can’t afford it, you don’t deserve it. Really?

The result is not mysterious:

• Wages flat; costs exploding.

• Health insurance that eats your paycheck and still doesn’t show up when you need it.

• Rent and home prices that make “start a family” or “retire” feel like fantasy quests.

• Student loans hanging over people like a lifelong cover charge.

• Many of you may not know this, but a college education used to be free in this country in most states.
  • My wife didn’t pay a dime for her college education in California. Not because she was poor and got a grant. But because Democrats knew that the money they invested in educating Americans would come back in higher wages, increased tax revenue, lower poverty, lower crime…the list goes on and on.
  • I bet you can think of some real benefits to free education for all Americans.

Meanwhile, we’re spending almost twice as much per person on healthcare as other wealthy countries — over $12,000 per person vs. around $5,000 across the OECD — and getting worse health outcomes and lower life expectancy for the privilege. Le Monde.fr+3healthsystemtracker.org+3OECD+3

If this is the shining city on a hill, the plumbing is shot and the landlord hasn’t been seen in decades.

And the whole time, we’ve been told, “There is no alternative.”
Turns out… yeah, there is.

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What Bernie and Zohran Are Actually Fighting For (Spoiler: It’s Not Gulags)

Strip away the spooky word ‘socialism’ for a second and just look at what Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani are actually fighting for…

It reads less like a Bolshevik manifesto and more like a grown-up to-do list for a rich country that finally realizes it should act like one.

1. Healthcare: A Hostage Rescue Mission

Democratic socialists don’t want the government to micromanage your life.
They want the government to stop letting private insurers hold your health hostage.

The Medicare for All vision is simple:

• Universal coverage as a right, not a job perk.

• No premiums, no deductibles, no surprise out-of-network bills.

• Dental, vision, mental health, home care — actually covered.

• Prescription prices capped so people aren’t splitting pills or skipping meds. The Guardian+1

Right now we spend more than any wealthy country on health care and still leave tens of millions uninsured or underinsured. The Guardian+3healthsystemtracker.org+3OECD+3

That’s not “freedom.” That’s a protection racket with better branding.

So no, Medicare for All isn’t a “government takeover.”
It’s a hostage rescue mission from an industry that’s been looting the place for decades.

2. Climate & Jobs: Green New Deal, Not Green Sermon

Climate isn’t a culture war issue. It’s physics. The planet doesn’t care how we feel about CO₂.

The democratic-socialist answer is the Green New Deal idea: treat climate like the world’s biggest jobs program.

• Massive investment in renewable energy, public transit, building retrofits.

• Millions of high-wage jobs rebuilding the physical backbone of the country.

• Transition help for workers in fossil fuel sectors so they’re not left holding the bag.

Think of it as:

A 20-million-jobs stimulus plan with a livable planet as a side effect.

Fossil fuel companies got rich selling us a product that’s cooking the planet and destabilizing everything from food prices to housing. They are not entitled to keep doing that forever and send us the bill for the clean-up.

3. Housing, Wages, and Basic Dignity

Also on the “terrifying socialist” list:

• Building millions of permanently affordable housing units.

• Strong tenant protections so one rent hike doesn’t erase a life.

• Pro-union laws and just-cause protections, so a manager can’t destroy your livelihood on a whim.

• Universal childcare and free school meals — the “invisible infrastructure” that makes it possible for people to actually work and kids to learn.

To the consultant class, all that sounds unrealistic. To anyone trying to raise a family while rent eats half their paycheck, it sounds like “bare minimum sanity.”

4. Taxing the Rich: Rent for Living in a Civilization

Then we get to the part that really sets off the fire alarms: taxes on the very rich.

Here’s what people forget:

• During and after WWII, the top U.S. marginal tax rate was over 90%, peaking at 94% in 1944 and staying above 90% until 1963. Wolters Kluwer+1

• That didn’t trigger a billionaire exodus.

• That period overlapped with an era of huge economic growth, expanding middle-class wealth, and the build-out of highways, schools, and research that still props up the economy today.

Did rich people still have mansions, yachts, and influence? Oh yes.
They just had to pay rent for living in a functioning civilization.

Compare that with today, where the top federal income tax rate sits in the 30–40% range, corporate taxes have been steadily carved down, and billionaires use more shell companies than a hermit crab convention. Wolters Kluwer+1

And no, hiking their taxes a few points is not going to trigger a mass “rich person refugee crisis.” The United States is still:

• The world’s primary financial hub.

• The deepest capital market on Earth.

• One of the easiest places to do business if you have money and lawyers.

Compared to Russia or China — where an autocrat can have you arrested, seize your assets, or hand your company to one of their friends if you sneeze wrong — the U.S. is still Disneyland for capital. Authoritarian regimes are not exactly known as safe havens for independent billionaires.

So when democratic socialists say:

“Let’s tax obscene wealth and corporate profits to pay for healthcare, housing, and climate survival,”

that’s not extremism. That’s remembering how we did things when the country actually worked.

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Americans Like These Ideas. The Label Is What’s Been Poisoned.

Here’s the part that should make every “There Is No Alternative” preacher sweat:

When you take these ideas to voters issue by issue, without the scary label, they win. And not just in Berkeley or Brooklyn.

• In 2018, deep-red Idaho put Medicaid expansion on the ballot. Voters passed it with about 60.6% support, expanding health coverage for low-income residents in a state dominated by Republicans. Wikipedia+1

• That same year in Florida, Amendment 4 — restoring voting rights to most people with prior felony convictions who had completed their sentences — passed with 64.55% of the vote, re-enfranchising an estimated 1.4 million people. Wikipedia+1

These are not fringe ideas. These are landslide ideas when people are allowed to vote on them directly.

And it’s not just ballot measures:

• Poll after poll shows strong support for higher taxes on billionaires and large corporations, especially when the money is earmarked for healthcare, education, and infrastructure. The Guardian+1

• Majorities support a government-run health plan as an option or as a universal guarantee. Peterson Foundation+1

• Voters in cities using ranked-choice voting (RCV) overwhelmingly report that the ballot is easy to use — in New York City’s recent elections, 96% of voters said their RCV ballot was simple, with strong support across racial groups. FairVote+1

The pattern is painfully consistent:

When people see the policy instead of the label, they pick the policy.

So if the ideas are popular, why do we feel like we’re constantly losing?

Because the game is rigged before we even get to the field.

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The Sabotage Machine: How Minority Rule Is Manufactured

If you were a billionaire whose entire business model depends on low taxes, weak unions, and privatized everything, and you saw people lining up behind policies that threaten that… what would you do?

You’d change the rules of the game.

Gerrymandering: Politicians Pick Their Voters First

In state after state, district lines are drawn so that:

• One party can win more seats with fewer votes.

• Communities of color and young voters are sliced and diced to blunt their power.

The goal isn’t representation; it’s pre-baked outcomes. Politicians pick their voters first, then graciously ask for their votes later.

Voter Suppression: Jim Crow in a Business Suit

When you can’t win a fair fight, you start adding hurdles:

• Closing polling places in Black, Latino, and Native communities.

• Strict ID laws carefully chosen to disqualify certain groups.

• Purging voter rolls and making registration a maze.

• Limiting early voting and mail voting, even when people clearly like and use them.

The Supreme Court helped by gutting key enforcement parts of the Voting Rights Act, opening the door to discriminatory laws as long as they don’t announce their intentions too loudly. Brennan Center for Justice+1

The message from above is basically:

“If we only block 2–3% of the wrong voters, and the race is close, that’s just good strategy.”

Imagine an airline saying, “Only 2% of our planes fall out of the sky; what are you whining about?”

Dark Money: Infinite Ammo, Zero Accountability

Then there’s the flood of dark money unleashed by decisions like Citizens United, turning elections into auction seasons where billionaires and corporations:

• Fund attack ads against anyone who threatens their tax breaks.

• Prop up astroturf “citizens’ groups” with friendly names and toxic agendas.

• Hire think tanks to produce endless reports explaining why your healthcare must remain terrible for freedom.

When democratic-socialist or progressive candidates manage to win in spite of all that, it’s a minor miracle. When they push policies that help real people, it’s treated as a scandal.

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The Real Divide Isn’t Left vs Right. It’s Solutions vs Sabotage.

Here’s where I’m going to be blunt:

If your whole political project is:

• No healthcare guarantee,

• No affordable housing push,

• No serious climate plan,

• No unions,

• No expansion of voting rights — and ideally, some rollbacks…

You’re not a “conservative.”

You’re a saboteur.

On one side of American politics, you’ve got people like Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani, — actually trying to fix things:

• Get people healthcare.

• Stabilize housing.

• Raise wages.

• Make elections fair.

• Keep the planet livable.

On the other side, you have politicians and donors whose main job is to block those fixes while yelling about drag queens, library books, and invented moral panics.

The culture war is not the main event. It’s the smoke machine in front of the stage where your retirement, your health, and your democracy are being sawed in half.

And where is the smoke coming from? As my favorite line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade puts it:

“It tells me that goose-stepping morons like yourself should try reading books instead of burning them.”

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Democratic Socialism in Practice: Pilot Programs for a Sane Country

This isn’t theoretical. Wherever democratic socialists and strong progressives manage to win office, you can see the blueprint being tested:

• Cities passing stronger tenant protections, rent stabilization, and anti-eviction rules.

• Local Green New Deal efforts: public power initiatives, community solar, free or discounted transit.

• Ranked-choice voting creating more representative city councils — younger, more diverse, more reflective of who actually lives in the city. The Fulcrum+1

Are these places perfect? No. Politics is messy everywhere…

But you can watch the difference in priorities:

Less “How do we protect billionaire feelings?” and more “How do we keep people housed, healthy, and heard?”

These are pilot projects for a different kind of country — one where we stop acting like basic security is a luxury.

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The Wealthiest Got There Through Building an App. But the Majority Got There As Landlords

Including Trump’s father.

So, let me ask you a question: Have you heard that real estate is the fastest way to wealth in this country? Why do you think that is?

It’s not magic. It’s policy. Real estate is the fastest path to wealth because our laws are written to make sure it is.

You get leverage (the bank hands you hundreds of thousands of dollars if you have decent credit), you get appreciation (decades of zoning and infrastructure decisions push prices up), and you get tax breaks (deductions, depreciation, 1031 exchanges, stepped-up basis when you die).

In other words, the system quietly says: if you own property, we will stack the deck for you; if you just need somewhere to live, you’re on your own.

That’s great if you already own a home or three. It’s a slow-motion heist if you’re a renter. Today, it sucks to be young.

Every month, you pay someone else’s mortgage, someone else’s equity, someone else’s shot at “fastest way to wealth,” while your rent climbs and your stability doesn’t.

And when housing policy is written by people with portfolios, not people living paycheck to paycheck, guess whose side the rules favor?

In case you didn’t know it, the “founding fathers” originally wrote the laws so only white men who owned property could vote. And what were all the “founding fathers”? Property owners.

That’s where the country is heading back to.

Real estate is the fastest way to wealth in America because we chose to make it that way. The question Bernie and Zohran are asking is: do we want a country where housing is primarily a wealth machine for landlords, or a stability machine for actual human beings?

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“Americans Are Listening” — That’s Why the Screaming Is Getting Louder

So why is “socialism” still treated like a slur on cable news?

Because the people who profit from the current disaster are not stupid. They can read polls. They saw Florida voters give 64.55% support to restoring voting rights. They saw Idaho — Idaho! — vote over 60% to expand Medicaid. flaglerelections.com+3Wikipedia+3Idaho Secretary of State+3

They know that if people ever consistently get to vote on policy instead of propaganda, the game changes.

So we get:

• “Venezuela! Breadlines! Communism!” anytime someone suggests taxing billionaires more than their assistants.

• Endless “think tank” pieces explaining why universal healthcare is “too radical,” even as we spend more and get less than our peers. Le Monde.fr+4healthsystemtracker.org+4OECD+4

• Billionaire-funded pundits warning that if workers get any leverage, the economy will explode like a cheap battery.

The volume of the smear campaign isn’t a sign that these ideas are failing.

It’s a panic alarm from people who sense that Americans are finally starting to connect the dots.

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So What Now? Enter the No Wimps Army. Wolverines.

If you’ve ever caught yourself thinking:

“I’m not sure I’m a socialist… but this all sounds pretty reasonable,”

congratulations — you’re already on the team.

This is where the No Wimps Army comes in — the folks who are done being polite about their own survival.

A few concrete moves:

1. Stop arguing labels. Start talking problems and solutions.
   Don’t get bogged down in “Is this socialism?”
   Talk about what it does:

   • Does it get people healthcare?

   • Does it keep people housed?

   • Does it make voting fairer?

   • Does it clean up the air and water?

2. Support the pilot projects.
   Back candidates and ballot measures that actually deliver:

   • Medicaid expansion

   • Voting rights restoration

   • Ranked-choice voting

   • Public housing and transit investments

   • Wealth and corporate tax reforms that fund public goods

3. Call sabotage what it is.
   When someone tries to kill Medicaid expansion, block voting access, or keep healthcare broken, don’t call that “a difference of opinion.”
   Call it what it is: an attack on your security and your vote.

4. Tell the true story of our own history.
   We taxed the rich at over 90% marginal rates during WWII and into the early ‘60s. The country didn’t collapse; it built highways, schools, and the middle class. Wolters Kluwer+1
   We expanded voting rights, built social insurance, and became a global powerhouse.

We’ve already proven we can be that country. We just stopped being it on purpose.

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For four decades, we’ve been told to wait patiently for a trickle that never comes while a handful of people fill Olympic-sized pools with our missing prosperity.

Democratic socialists are not promising a utopia. They’re offering something a lot less glamorous and a lot more necessary:

A country where everyone gets a glass of water before we refill the billionaire infinity pools.

They have solutions.
Americans are listening.

Now the question is whether the rest of us — the No Wimps Army, the would-be Wolverines of democracy — are ready to stop begging for drips and start demanding a system where everyone drinks.

By the way, I posted a shorter version on Substack: The Game Is Rigged. Bernie and Zohran have the repair manual.