I strongly suspect that likely Democratic voters of a certain age are very nervous about giving the GOP a chance to run against a socialist, or social democrat, or democratic socialist, or whatever it is Bernie Sanders will be labelled should things go that far.

Perhaps younger voters think this silly, but many of us remember a time when admitting to being a liberal in electoral politics was the kiss of death, never mind the “S” word. In fact, calling someone a socialist and having it stick was not only, once upon a time, the end of electoral viability but maybe even cause for an invitation from a very special House Committee to come in and have a chat (at which there would be cameras).

Sahib Kapur at Bloomberg Politics cites the frequently heard Bernie Sanders’ comment that he, Sanders, is out-polling Hillary Clinton against all three GOP contenders currently running campaigns. And I have no doubt this is true.

The concern, however, as reported by Kapur, is partly expressed by one Republican operative, Mitt Romney campaign official Ryan Willians, who recently said, “Republicans are being nice to Bernie Sanders because we like the thought of running against a socialist…There’s no mystery what the attack would be. Bernie Sanders is literally a card-carrying socialist who honeymooned in the Soviet Union. There’d be hundreds of millions of dollars in Republican ads showing hammers and sickles and Soviet flags in front of Bernie Sanders.”

Clinton, on the other hand, is a centrist, Wlliams goes on to say, and will better appeal to moderates and undecided voters than Sanders. “Bernie’s numbers are better than hers right now because she has been in the political arena for thirty years getting beat up.”

Other reasons Clinton may be a stronger general election candidate include her foreign policy experience, the fact that her “negatives are set in,” and that the Republican National Committee is, according to Kapur “doling out reams of opposition research on Clinton, but virtually none on Sanders.”

And I think we should add that Bernie is good on the things that Bernie knows well and cares about, but appears not to have a particularly broad base of policy knowledge, certainly not in terms of specifics, unlike Mrs. Clinton.

If you are looking for more proof, consider that RNC chair Reince Priebus never tires of saying how much he’d rather run against Hillary Clinton, which means he’d rather not run against Hillary Clinton.

But, really, the socialist thing concerns me, writing as one who is old enough to remember duck-and-cover drills in the classroom.

For the record, I’ve identified as a social democrat for decades, so it’s not that I want people to be afraid of ideas potentially unfamiliar to them, only that I fear they tend to be.

I will, however, add this before someone else does. In early March a YouGov survey found that “43 percent of respondents under the age of thirty had a favourable view of socialism. Only 32 percent had a favourable view of capitalism.”

So, if times they are a changin’, the question for the 2016 cycle is: Are they changing quickly enough? I’m guessing the answer is no.

Follow me on Twitter @RichardKBarry1