WASHINGTON -- Democrats bristle, but Republicans have successfully framed the 2020 election as a struggle against socialism -- an ideology that not one Democratic contender says they advocate.

President Donald Trump set the table in his State of the Union speech when he declared that “America will never be a socialist country.” He has reiterated the warning over and over since then, most recently on Saturday, when he set off thunderous applause at a major conservative gathering by depicting a push toward “total domination” by government.

“Socialism is not about the environment. Socialism is not about justice. Socialism is about only one thing, it’s called power for the ruling class. Look at what’s happening in Venezuela,” he said at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference. “The future does not belong to those who believe in socialism.”

Democrats call the comparison ridiculous and inflammatory. Embracing a more expansive social safety net, they say, is fundamentally different from the autocratic socialism practiced in Cuba, Venezuela or the former Soviet Union.

In Texas last year, 11-term Dallas congressman Pete Sessions tarred challenger Colin Allred as a socialist, but to no avail. Allred handily unseated him, 52-46.

And Sen. Ted Cruz likewise slapped the label on Beto O’Rourke, who may soon join the Democratic presidential field. The El Paso congressman pushed back then, and again last month when Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders declared for president on Feb. 19, triggering a fresh round of Republican warnings about creeping socialism.

Sanders and another self-described democratic socialist, freshman Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, are driving much of the energy on the left, and Trump and other Republicans have invoked the specter of socialism to animate the president’s base.

Only about one in five voters profess any fondness for socialism in opinion polls. So it’s a potent line of attack that puts Democrats on the defensive, forcing them to explain the difference between mainstream Democratic views, the more aggressive stances of Sanders and Ocasia-Cortez, and the despotic and economically ruinous systems in places like Cuba and Venezuela.

“I’m a capitalist,” O’Rourke told reporters in El Paso the day after Sanders announced his campaign. “I don’t see how we’re able to meet any of the fundamental challenges that we have as a country without, in part, harnessing the power of the market.”

Rank-and-file Democrats decry the way Republicans apparently confuse “socialism” with enthusiasm for the social safety net and and a desire to rebalance the tax code so the wealthy and corporations pay a bigger share.

On that side of the ideological divide, such judgment calls fall within a traditional range of policy options within the American system of democracy and capitalism.

“I’ve never seen Bernie as a socialist,” Brenda Klauer, 55, a special education aide, said at a recent rally in Bettendorf, Iowa, with Sen. Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who launched her bid for president on Jan. 21. Cheaper college? Health care for all? These, to Klauer, are not socialism, though she recognizes that Republicans may see it differently.

“It works well for their base. Most of our friends think Democrats are a bunch of freeloaders. We’re not,” she said.

Moments later, reporters gathered around Harris. The first question, from a local Fox TV affiliate, focused on whether her push to expand health care amounted to socialism.

“First of all,” Harris replied, “I am not a socialist.”

1 / 8Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., speaks during the Women's March Alliance on, Jan. 19, 2019, in New York.(Mary Altaffer / AP) 2 / 8College student James Stevens, 20, wears a Socialism SUCKS button at annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 1, 2019. - Twenty months before Americans vote on re-electing Donald Trump, conservative supporters are already slapping many of his progressive 2020 challengers with a resurgent political taint: socialist. The word has been in heavy rotation since Democratic candidates began openly embracing far-left platforms including a sweeping plan to fight climate change.(MICHAEL MATHES / Getty Images) 3 / 8Vice President Mike Pence speaks during the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, on March 1, 2019.(MANDEL NGAN / Getty Images) 4 / 8Sen. Kamala Harris campaigns at Canyon Springs High School on March 1, 2019 in North Las Vegas, Nevada.(Ethan Miller / Getty Images) 5 / 8Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., speaks in Brooklyn as he kicks off his second presidential campaign on March 2, 2019. He pledged to fight for "economic justice, social justice, racial justice and environmental justice."(Craig Ruttle / AP) 6 / 8Supporters of Sen. Bernie Sanders wait to see him speak at Brooklyn College on March 02, 2019. Sanders, a staunch liberal and critic of President Donald Trump, was holding his first rally of his 2020 presidential campaign.(Spencer Platt / Getty Images) 7 / 8Julián Castro speaks with Democratic voters while stumping for president in Denison, Iowa, at Cronk's restaurant on Feb. 22, 2019.(Todd J. Gillman / staff) 8 / 8Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado speaks with reporters in Polk City, Iowa., after meeting with farmers on Feb. 23., 2019, as he weighs a bid for the Democratic presidential nomination.(Todd J. Gillman / Dallas Morning News)

She’s hardly the only Democratic contender regularly facing such questions, given the drumbeat from Trump and his allies.

“The Republican line of attack is to call everyone, including you, a socialist,” one Iowan told Julián Castro, a former San Antonio mayor and housing secretary during Barack Obama’s second term, at a recent campaign stop in Denison. “They’ve talked about how we want to take away their cows and their airplanes and their cars. We all laugh at that but ... how do you combat the charges?”

That referred to the Green New Deal, the plan championed by Ocasio-Cortez aimed at mitigating climate change by encouraging a shift away from fossil fuels. Trump’s chief economic adviser, Larry Kudlow, calls it “central planning on a grand scale” and a prime example of the Democrat’s drive toward socialism.

Castro defended that and other policies the right raises alarms over, including taxes that require a “fair share” from wealthy individuals and corporations.

“They'll call people socialist, even though socialism means the state controlling the means of production. Nobody in this race is calling for the state to control the means of production, and nobody's actually embracing socialism,” Castro said.

“You know, these folks are going to name-call. They're going to try and use their scare tactics,” Castro said, but making higher education and good health care affordable -- “This is not something that’s radical.”

Stumping with farmers the next day in Polk City, Iowa, Sen. Michael Bennet of Colorado, who led the Democrats’ Senate campaign arm in the 2014 elections, conceded that some Democratic ideas do give Republicans an opening to attack. He cited the “Medicare-for-all” approach that would drive millions off private insurance, noting that he has pushed instead to create a public option.

“The president is ... trying to disqualify Democrats by calling them socialists,” Bennet said. “We should ... be strategic and not make it easier.” Even so, he said, “none of the health care policies proposed by Democrats is socialism.”

Iowa farmer Les Tesdell, like many Democrats, rejects the epithet.

“It’s a bunch of BS,” he said. “They love to throw that word around. What they’re trying to do is tie people to how socialist regimes around the world that have been dictatorships. That’s a different thing. What the democratic socialists in this country are saying is, we need to take care of our own people.”

President Donald Trump hugs the American flag as he arrives on stage to speak at the Conservative Political Action Conference, CPAC 2019, in Oxon Hill, Md., on March 2, 2019. (Jose Luis Magana / AP)

Effective bogeyman

A glance at polls shows why Republicans want to promote socialism as the main bogeyman in the 2020 election.

Just 18 percent of Americans view socialism in a positive light, according to an NBC/Wall St. Journal Poll released Sunday.

At the same time, nearly two-thirds of voters believe the Democratic Party supports socialism, according to a Harvard/Harris poll released last week. And more than half of all voters 24 and under say they support a "mostly socialist" model; for them, the Cold War is ancient history.

Take the proposals championed by Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who’ll stump in Dallas on Sunday: a 2 percent tax on wealth above $50 million, and a 70 percent tax bracket for income above $10 million.

Polls show strong Democratic support.

“The Democrats are giving us a lot of gifts right now but ... we can’t think that the American people understand what socialism is. We do have to go out and educate,” Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said at CPAC, at a hotel in Oxon Hill, Md., where Trump spoke on Saturday.

In Venezuela, she said, “People are eating dog food to survive.”

One speaker after another tarred Democrats with the label.

Vice President Mike Pence warned on Friday that "Bernie’s been joined by a chorus of candidates and newly elected officials who have papered over the failed policies of socialism with bumper sticker slogans and slick social media campaigns.”

Katrina Pierson, a Dallas-area tea party activist who challenged Sessions in 2014, and is now a senior Trump campaign aide, asserted that the left sells socialism “with a smile” even as liberal billionaire investors Tom Steyer, who leads a push to impeach Trump, and George Soros, use their fortunes to “fund the destruction of society.”

Heads -- many covered with red Make America Great Again caps -- nodded.

“People come to him and they say Mr. Soros, I have a project. I want to push socialism,’” she said. “You know what he says? How much?’ And he writes a check.”

At a CNN town hall on Feb. 25, Sanders rejected the idea that a $15 an hour minimum wage or free college leads to Venezuela-style economic malaise and despotism.

“What democratic socialism means to me is having in a civilized society with the understanding that we can make sure that all of our people live in security and in dignity,” he said. “If I am elected president, we will have a nation in which all people will have health care as a right, whether Trump likes it or not.”