At the same time, though, at the national level Debs remains by far the most successful socialist in American history.

In 1912, he received just over 900,000 votes (nearly 6% of the popular vote) for President.

His vote total was a bit higher in 1920 (913,693), but that was only 3.4% of the total. That was the first Presidential election in which women could vote, hence the much larger electorate. Oh, did I mention that he campaigned from prison in that election?

Thanks Chicago Fan.

I know this is unlikely to succeed internationally, but here in the a-historical US there is going to be an ongoing effort to make Mandela's corpse into a capitalist ideological monkey.

This is a really nice parallel, Bill. Thanks. A link for Debs that includes much more of his sentencing statement:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._D…

@2: This may vaccinate against that pestilence.

Debs is too utopian for my taste.

All I really know about Eugene V. Debs I learned from reading Kurt Vonnegut.

Don't be silly. It's not "because socialism". It's because "America!". Mandela was a Socialist too (possibly even a communist) but the reason we love Mandela is that he fought an oppressive regime in a foreign country. We don't hear about Debs because he fought against an oppressive regime here in the USA.