In a general election, this is the club the right would use against Bernie. All his ideas are sound and would appeal, by themselves, to the majority of Americans. But, if 2014 taught us anything, it's that elections are not decided on the popularity of ideas. They are decided on messaging: "Obama bad!" won the 2014 election for the Repugs. Please follow me below the orange monopoly token for more.
Progressives need to fight this Repug messaging that government regulation of the economic space is equivalent to total government control of it (the classic definition of socialism). To fight this battle, we need to point out that our economy is not Capitalist now. Capitalism and the "Free Market", for that matter, implies competition. Would anyone suggest we have competition anywhere in our economy, when every market is dominated by two or three corporations tops, and the collusion between those corporations is not out of the question? What we have is oligopolism, which is anathema to Capitalism.
Progressives should push the idea that breaking up monopolies/oligopolies is actually nurturing Capitalism. Bernie has said he would break up the big banks if he had the power.
What if Bernie took applying the Sherman Anti-Trust not just to the banks but to all sectors of the economy. By creating more competition, wouldn't he be considered an arch-Capitalist? This is the messaging he should be sending instead of admitting that he is a Socialist. I don't really believe he is a socialist, but he is accepting that label.
Just imagine the benefits of a true trust-buster with a like-minded Congress. It would break the billionaire class up and create many more millionaires in its place. Millionaires might not be able to buy elections as billionaires are doing now.
Also, breaking the pie into many more pieces would create more jobs because there would be more companies competing.
We would realize the benefits of true "free-market" capitalism the Repugs tout, with the lowering of prices. (Repugs don't really believe in "free markets," they believe in laissez-faire capitalism dominated by oligopolies run by their donors; a good messenger would attack the Repugs for their hypocrisy in this area).
I'm not sure Bernie can get us to this utopia because he would need to be a messaging genius to win the election. It's not good enough to have popular ideas. You've got to counter the crap the right throws at you while teaching Americans the benefits of your ideas and the pitfalls of allowing Repugs to run the show. Boy, Democrats in 2014 lost the latter battle big-time. They need to do much better opposition research. I can't believe Joni (freakin') Ernst is a Senator. Bruce Braley could have tied her to nullification, a conspiracy theory that Obama is involved with a UN take-over of the world, or her belief that Iraq actually has WMDs. But, he didn't. He tried to win the "battle of ideas", and lost to Repug "Obama bad" messaging. Do you think Dems will ever learn to attack with messaging of their own, like "Joni pig-castrator Ernst is batshit crazy! Do you want to give a lunatic a lever of power in our government? WTF are you thinking!" I digress.
But, we progressives should help with the messaging battle. Instead of saying we want socialism, we should say we are "arch-Capitalists". That is much closer to the truth of the matter anyway.