According to a recent PEW poll fourty-nine percent of voters under the age of thirty had a positive view socialism whereas only fourty-six percent had a positive view of capitalism. Socialism beating out capitalism in popularity with young voters represents a massive change in public opinion. Not long ago socialism was a smear term conservatives used to scare people with but now it's not so scary but has instead become down right popular. What does this mean for the future of America? Could we see the rise of a new socialist party or the "take over" of the Democratic party for socialism simmilar to the far right tea party take over of the Republican party?
The New Yorker :
"A 2011 Pew Research Center survey found that, among voters under the age of thirty, forty-nine per cent had a positive view of socialism. (Only forty-six per cent had a positive view of capitalism.) Peter Dreier, a professor of politics at Occidental College, who has written about Sanders, says that younger voters “may not be willing to entertain a whole new system, but they are open to a pretty profound critique of the current one. They’re not as naïve as Americans used to be during the Cold War—they know that there are varieties of capitalism, that there is social democracy in Scandinavia and Canada, where the government plays a bigger role in regulating corporations and in expanding the safety net.”
(Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.)
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