First, I want to thank John for participating and the organizers of the debate for setting this up and flying me in and putting me up at a hotel that’s actually called — and I love this — “The Overton.”

For anyone who’s not familiar, political commentators often talk about something called “The Overton Window,” which is the range of ideas considered realistically imaginable enough to even be up for debate at a given point in history. Things outside the window are too outlandish to consider. In US politics, socialism was way outside the window for most of my lifetime. But little by little, that’s changing.

Last week, Congress held a vote to, and I quote, “condemn the horrors of socialism.” I’m sure that if they’d done that in 2013, it would have been unanimous. Every Democrat, every Republican. In 2023, there were eighty-six “nay” votes — plus fourteen weasels who voted “present.” In 2023, it seems, a lot of politicians know their constituents don’t want them to denounce socialism.