Democratic Socialism

[betsuni]

39. I see people describing it as economic equality, no understanding of regulated or unregulated capitalism.

Republican voters know Democrats are the regulators but people who call Democrats "neoliberals" have been told that both sides are bribed by billionaires to have the same unregulated capitalist policies and that's that.

The confusion began in 2015/16 when democratic socialism was given a new incorrect definition, FDR liberalism.

"Roosevelt knew his New Deal would be attacked as socialistic, so to protect it he called it liberalism ... captured the term for the Democrats and redefined it to mean a philosophy of government responsibility for social welfare. The result was that liberalism came to mean things like unemployment insurance, universal healthcare, Social Security and the like. ... However, it is a path that leaves capitalism as its economic engine.

"Only one presidential candidate I know of has ever adopted his own political label and given a speech defining it. That label, of course, is 'democratic socialist,' an old label but one which ... gave his own personal meaning to ... . [He] has spent his entire political life in the socialist lane, which has no track record of success. For credibility, he needs to move out of it but cannot abandon his lifelong 'socialist' label. So he tweaked his label to a less familiar one, 'democratic socialist,' and redefined this to be the same as FDR liberalism. So now he pretends that FDR was a socialist and he ... is the new FDR. ... [His followers] believe: Today's liberals reject FDR's political agenda because FDR was a democratic socialist. And so they see liberals as either conservative (neoliberals) or corrupt. Their reasoning is this: Liberals reject democratic socialism. and FDR was a democratic socialist, so liberals reject FDR. ... This deception continues to do a huge amount of damage to the Democratic Party."

Steven Stoft, How Democrats Win, Resisting Dark-Side Radicalism