I’m not sure if I’m a democratic socialist or not. Admittedly, I haven’t thought about it much because it didn’t seem practical. There was no way I could be a “serious person” in American political thought and the media if I declared myself or even flirted with being a democratic socialist.

That was before Bernie Sanders.

Whatever the outcome of his presidential nomination bid, I suspect one of the lasting impacts the Sanders campaign will have on American politics and activism is the increasing willingness of political leaders and ordinary Americans to more proudly claim bold left positions. Think of it as freeing your own Bern.

Once upon a time, progressive activists and political leaders were very much steeped in radical left politics. Socialist Party leader Eugene V. Debs founded several of the earliest American labor unions and ran for president five times, though he never got more than 5% of the popular vote. In 1930, then Governor of New York state Franklin Delano Roosevelt said: “There is no question in my mind that it is time for the country to become fairly radical for a generation.” He went on, as president, to institute radical safety net policies in the New Deal.