Sanders isn't a socialist in the Marxist sense. He's a Democratic Socialist in the northern European sense. Think Denmark, Netherlands, Sweden, and Norway. In those countries, college tuition is free because the governing bodies know how economically important an educated workforce is. Workers have strong protections including paid maternity and sick leave, strong pensions and reasonable employment security. And everyone has single payer healthcare.
Interestingly, the economies in these countries are generally sound, and their people much happier, healthier and less stressed.
There's a new essay out there called Regenerative Capitalism you should look at. Most thoughtful people, on either side of the aisle, recognize that the current neoliberal capitalist model is not sustainable, yet what do you replace it with?
A regenerative capitalist approach calls for us to rethink a couple things: Our biggest problem lies in the current business model calling for the primacy of shareholders at the expense of everyone else. So we can say that the CEO's ONLY job in a publicly held company is to increase the value for shareholders. This at the expense of labor, customer and environment.
On a related note, a regenerative approach calls for us to jettison the concept of the 'externality.' In business parlance, an 'externality' is some consequence of doing business that the company itself does not have to pay a penalty for. An example is if a company fouls the water table in your community and taxpayers end up paying for the clean up but the company is not financially penalized, then to the company the pollution it caused is an 'externality.'
A regenerative approach eliminates these externalities, and calls for companies to consider not only shareholders, but labor, customers and the environment. Some local approaches that are regenerative include slow money and slow food - which call for investment within a 50 mile radius of the locality and a balanced agricultural approach that actually meets the needs of that community while at the same time producing surplus for export. It calls for micro lending and encourages entrepreneurship. It encourages the growth of B corporations (benevolent - the CEO of a B corporation must take into account externalities, and the needs of all stakeholders, not just shareholders. Finally, it promotes engagement of people through employee owned companies or coops.
That was Marx's genius by the way - he spoke of the ownership of the means of production being out of the hands of labor, which then necessarily were little different than the old feudal serfs.
As to Sanders? I think he can win. Oh, there will be major smears against him because the oligarchs don't want to do the things he advocates, but he's no more radical, or socialist than was Franklin Roosevelt. In fact, Sanders would have fit right in as a New Dealer. As long as he sticks to the issues he's been talking about, it is a winning message.
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