Polls Show Americans Don't Know What A Socialist Is

Polls Show Americans Don't Know What A Socialist Is

Not sure how else to explain it. Other than people just consider being for socialism something of evil intent. What are we, in the cold war? Either way, 55% of Voters believe Obama is a socialist.

Poll: 55% Of Likely Voters Think Obama's A Socialist

Have months of Fox News hyperventilating and right-wing fear mongering over our supposed socialist-in-chief finally paid off? A majority of voters now think President Barack Obama is a socialist, at least according to one new poll.

The poll (PDF) from Democracy Corps finds that 55 percent of likely voters believe that the word "socialist" describes the president either "well" or "very well."

Peyton Craighill, a senior associate at Greenberg Quinlan Rosner, a firm that does polling for Democracy Corps, attributed the surprising number to voters' impatience with the lagging economy.

"It probably has to do with the fact that people are very unhappy with the dire economy and the fact that the budget deficit is quite large," Craighill said. "People who don't like the man are going to use any label they can to ding him, even if they don't think he's a socialist in the vein of the Soviet Union or China."

June's poll was the first Democracy Corps survey to ask respondents if they consider the President to be a socialist, but Craighill said the monthly poll will continue to ask the question in the future. "It's something we want to track on future reporting for how this might relate to the Tea Party movement," he said. Craighill expects Democracy Corps to publish a report specific to the Tea Party movement in a few weeks.

The poll was conducted June 19-22. It surveyed 1,001 adults who voted in 2008, including 867 adults likely to vote in 2010 and 134 "drop-off" voters, defined as 2008 voters less likely to vote in 2010. Its margin of error is ±3.0.

This right here. This is America. George Carlin once said "Think of how stupid the average person is and then realize that half of them are stupider than that." That saying is so true. But I guess I can't really fault the person themselves for being woefully ignorant. 98% of undergrad political science students don't even know what socialism is.

Somehow I want to blame public education, is that ironic or what?

So 55% of likely voters are fucking idiots. Perhaps the only proof most people need towards him being a Socialist is that he doesn't advocate abolishing Socialism Security. But this is the message that America has been bombarded with for the last two years, so I guess eventually Fox news will make you believe their lies.

This poll essentially showed us proof that 98% of Americans don't know what the fuck socialism actually is. And no, it's not what ARE TROOPS died in WW2, Korea, and Vietnam to protect us against.

It really is the perfect rhetorical assault on corporatists, because if you explain what socialism actually is it might sound like a good idea.

I don't know about you, but I find it completely hilarious that when you ask a typical liberal about Bush, you'll hear endlessly about how he's stupid, incompetent, and looks like a monkey. The fact that he deliberately looted the government will be mentioned only in passing. Maybe it's because TV pundits will openly talk about his incompetence but not his corruption. Or maybe it's because people would rather believe the president incompetent than evil.

Wait, no. Only democrats would rather believe this. Republicans are quite willing to call Obama evil.

"He's a bad president, therefore he's SOCIALIST!" - Americans

I wish Obama was a socialist. Besides, wouldn't being socialist instead of another milquetoast 'moderate' make him a better president? But that's if he was socialist. As we all know, socialism involves letting private corporations do whatever the hell they want without any regulations, as was the case with the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

But hey, what do I know. The majority clearly knows what socialism is. I wonder how many farm owners getting corn subsides complain about his socialist practice. Though those aren't socialist practices either but considering how they're lumping everything of Welfare into Socialism, they should. Please don't confuse socialism and welfare.

Welfare is the state redistribution of funds toward necessary public expenses (education, food stamps, health care, unemployment insurances, etc.)

Socialism is the worker/state ownership and control of the means of production.


Corn subsidies are the largest example of welfare. NOT socialism. Those EBT cards you see minorities use at the market for milk and cheese are NOT socialist programs. They are simply welfare. And even then, I guess the real term to use would be wealth redistribution, which it actually is. This isn't a bad thing in a capitalist society anyway. It's just not socialism, which would be a better thing.

The Postal service is another one tossed around by crazy conservatives. I guess you can say the military is run by the soldiers who are kind of like workers, and control the means of production... which is death. I guess the government buying GM could potentially be mistakenly pinned to socialism, but no. still not a winner.

At the current moment, there is no examples of socialism in the United States. You teabaggers really need to fight another cause or find another word to use. Obama is not a socialist. I wish he was. But he's not.

We sure wouldn't want to confuse anybody into liking socialism.


Though there's many who would say that what I'm saying here is just nonsense. "Control of the means of production" is to them, meaningless sloganeering, Socialism is not worker's control, it is the end of recognition of all property norms. A rejection of the concept of value, and not a restructuring of who controls the means of production, but a programmed production system where goods are produced for their usefulness and not for exchange.

But hey, I guess the co-op I'm talking about is just a more acceptable socialism example that could appeal to the petit-bourgeois inside all of us.

So there you go. Now I don't want to see you tea baggers with your stupid signs saying Obama is a Socialist. And if you believe Hitler actually was running off of National Socialism, you should go fuck yourself.