If he became president and succeeded at first he might have been widely celebrated, as comrade Chavez was. Then he would have likely won the re-election in a la

If he became president and succeeded at first he might have been widely celebrated, as comrade Chavez was. Then he would have likely won the re-election in a landslide that dwarfed Reagan's victory and implemented policies further to the left. And then a decade in the future (might even be more than that, US is resilient) it would have blown up in everyone's faces, just as it did in Venezuela. The general public has a short attention span, it seldom thinks of what would happen 10-15 years down the road.