Opinion: Anti-socialism won't win election

Chris Mathys is basically a fringe candidate in the Second Congressional District of New Mexico, as if there’s such a thing as a fringe candidate in Donald Trump’s Republican Party.

It’s almost laughable how Mathys and his party opposition — Yvette Herrell and Claire Chase — are all trying to out-Trump each other. Herrell and Chase are accusing each other of Trump disloyalty even before the man took ownership of their party, but Mathys is using another approach. He’s suggesting that he has an ideological kinship with the president in that they’re both determined not to let socialism take over this country.

Such positioning won’t likely get him the Republican nomination — the monied interests have made it a battle between Herrell, who won the nomination two years ago before barely losing to Democrat Xochitl Torres Small, and Chase, who swims freely in her family oil-and-gas fortune — but Mathys has a point about a socialist takeover.

People are already expecting a bigger “safety net” for those who fall victim to the current economic collapse — and that’s going to require a greater redistribution of the nation’s wealth.

You can call it socialism, or liberalism, or just plain pragmatism, but our country is about to take a sharp left turn toward Big Government. It will be necessary to stave off an all-out depression.

The federal government’s response to our economic woes could come in the form of stimulus packages like the ones recently passed to put money in our pockets and keep employers from laying off more people. Or the response could come in the form of systemic overhauls — like healthcare for all, in which everyone is entitled to the medical care they need, regardless of their ability to pay.

I suspect systemic changes are going to gain in popularity both during and after the 2020 general election.

During the Great Depression, socialism became a very real threat to the nation’s free market approach to the economy, but it was all tempered by President Franklin D. Roosevelt and his New Deal government intervention — as left-wing populist Huey Long nipped at his heals.

Long, a wildly popular Louisiana political boss in his day, gained national attention with his “Share Our Wealth” movement that would put caps on individual wealth, establish guaranteed incomes for every American, and create an old-age pension for everyone over age 60.

Both Long and Roosevelt struggled for the heart and soul of their Democratic Party, and if FDR hadn’t shifted left in response to the needs of the poverty-stricken masses, Long might have derailed his re-election in 1936, during the depths of the depression.

That’s how Social Security was born.

Back to the here-and-now, I don’t think Mathys has a chance of winning with his anti-socialism talk. Ideologies aren’t top-of-mind for Americans struggling through this economic downturn. Torres Small seems to realize that; instead of stooping to reactionary talk, she’s better off ignoring such noise and focusing on issues like rural access to healthcare, an important issue in the mostly rural congressional district she represents.

As a moderate, solutions-seeking Democrat, I suspect she will beat down any sort of ideological warfare tactics her general election opponent might try to use.

Tom McDonald is editor of the New Mexico Community News Exchange. Contact him at:

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