Democrat ignorance of the benefits of capitalism is costly

Larry Elder:

Hillary Clinton recently offered yet another reason why she lost her second consecutive race for the presidency: capitalism.

At the Shared Value Leadership Summit in New York City, Clinton was asked whether her self-proclaimed "capitalist" stance hurt her during the 2016 presidential primary season. "It's hard to know," she said, "but I mean, if you're in the Iowa caucuses and 41 percent of Democrats are socialists or self-described socialists, and I'm asked, 'Are you a capitalist?' and I say, 'Yes, but with appropriate regulation and appropriate accountability.' You know, that probably gets lost in the 'Oh, my gosh, she's a capitalist!'"

Clinton's right. Being a Democrat and a "capitalist" is an increasingly untenable position for a politician. Polls show that today's Democratic Party and capitalism appear to be on a collision course. A November 2015 New York Times/CBS News poll found that 56 percent of Democratic primary voters said they held a positive view of socialism. A Morning Consult/Politico survey in June 2017 asked if a hypothetical replacement for House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi should be a socialist or capitalist. More Democrats opted for socialism, with 35 percent saying it's somewhat or very important that her replacement be a socialist, while only 31 percent said the same for a capitalist.

Indeed, one of the Democrats' loudest voices, filmmaker Michael Moore, recently praised Karl Marx, the ideological godfather of communism. Moore tweeted: "Happy 200th Birthday Karl Marx! You believed that everyone should have a seat at the table & that the greed of the rich would eventually bring us all down. You believed that everyone deserves a slice of the pie. You knew that the super wealthy were out to grab whatever they could. ... Though the rich have sought to distort him or even use him, time has shown that, in the end, Marx was actually mostly right & that the aristocrats, the slave owners, the bankers and Goldman Sachs were wrong... 'Happy Birthday, Karl Marx. You Were Right!'" Tell that to the millions who died under communist repression in, among other places, China, the Soviet Union and Cambodia.

Perhaps no issue reflects this socialist view more than the Democrats' push for "single-payer" health care. As a state senator, Barack Obama said: "I happen to be a proponent of a single-payer, universal health care program. I see no reason why the United States of America, the wealthiest country in the history of the world, spending 14 percent of its gross national product on health care, cannot provide basic health insurance to everybody. ... A single-payer health care plan, a universal health care plan. That's what I'd like to see. But as all of you know, we may not get there immediately." A few years later, then-presidential candidate Obama reiterated his stance, that if "starting from scratch" he'd have a single-payer system.
...

People who want socialism are ignorant of history and economics.  They have this fantasy that when it fails it is because it "was not done right."  It is the opposite.  "Doing it right" always leads to failure and rationing.  If you try to repeal the laws of supply and demand you will always have lines waiting to buy goods that capitalism makes readily available.

The Clinton alternative was control freak capitalism which is just as bad.