re: How much would single payer cost?

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Boy he has you fooled. Is it because he has three houses and drives a 100k car? The elite in Communist Russia lived high on the hog, too.

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I mean, by all means, explain to me how the modern social democrat movement is more closely aligned with classic Marxism then, say, the CPUSA of the 20's-50's?

Heck, even the modern version of that party is at major odds with social democrats.

Whether its easy to digest or not, things are not so binary. Just like the right has their neoconservatives and Trump conservatives, tea partiers and Reagan Republicans. Eisenhower was far more liberal then many of his pre-WWI Republicans, while modern Republicans have aspects that are far more conservative then Eisenhower's. To the point of being unrecognizable in some areas. Things change, but not always in simple black and white shifts toward or against ideals from specific past moments in history. Trump's platform on infrastructure and stimulus was actually a liberalization of the party away from their anti-keyneisan shift since Reagan. While the abandonment of Reagan ideas to deal with environmental externalities like a cap and trade system once used to reign in acid rain, is now a pariah idea for the party.

The lack of endorsing authoritarianism is not just a major departure between Social Democrats and Marxist-Leninism, its a major departure from socialism and Marxist-Leninism.

Sanders wing is about as skeptical of the deep state as the Trumpers. Though you have your Sanders, but also your Tony Blair's, so, yeah.

Do you really think a system that requires individuals to act against their own self-interest would work without authoritarian means? Your "kinder, gentler communism" would fail miserably (and be followed quickly by totalitarianism).