This is blatant tailism. Conceding to reactionaries undermines your goals long term unless you yourself are a reactionary.

We shouldn't be fucking galvanizing the masses to take brutal action to suppress "socialists".

You can do that without making further political development more difficult. That's why I despise framing welfare as socialism, or tax breaks for capitalists as "socialism for the rich," confusing radicalized liberals inevitably leads to socdem politics as reinforced by bourgeois cultural hegemony.

For generations Michigan has been the center of American working class resistance. You can talk about class politics there.

It is because you don't "sell" socialism by lying

Yeah, you're not about to catch me saying that this isn't a limit of electoralism or it's a good thing. But what it is is an example of someone who has undoubtedly looked at some kind of opinion poll, social media sentiment check (especially as is relates to smears made against you), and recent election messaging response to determine what kind of phrasing moves the needle. More correct != more votes. In my personal experience tying yourself into a knot to be correct and still appealing only serves to confuse your audience who doesn't understand the domain enough to understand what you're being correct about. Socialism is when the government does stuff it the prevailing understanding, socialism is when the government does stuff for corporations is a critique that the GOP can't untangle in the voter's mind because Rogers gets a Gorillian dollars from AIPAC.

That's the way I've been observing the landscape recently.