Letter-to-the-editor in response to an article in The Nation

In “Centrist Dems Are Wrong About November’s Losses” (Dec 21, 2020), Steve Phillips presents evidence that high Republican turnout is what caused multiple Democratic House members to lose their seats. He claims, without evidence, that the slogans “defund the police” and “socialism” aren’t what caused the high GOP turnout.   But the sad thing is that “reform the police” would have been a perfectly acceptable slogan. Moreover, Bernie Sanders is not even a socialist, according to analyses by Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Paul Krugman and other scholars.  He’s a social democrat (a New Deal liberal).    Why are Dems and progressives so bad at messaging?