Bernie likes this quote: “Socialism is the epithet they have hurled at every advance the people have made in the last 20 years... Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people.” –Harry Truman
shareAnd that was during Truman's time.
Another 70 years has gone by and "socialism" is still in vogue as the pejorative de jure to tar anyone on the left. Bill Clinton was even called a socialist by right wing smear merchants.
It's pretty silly when Bernie's Democratic Socialism is politically aligned to FDR's New Deal economic liberalism; a strong social safety net guaranteeing equality of opportunity but firmly grounded in free market capitalism and exemplified today in the Nordic model. It's just that both the Dem and Republican party has swung so far to the right economically over the last 70 years that Bernie's ideas are especially susceptible to scare mongering by the demagogues of ignorance.