Political Discussion and Commentary

I thought Democrats embraced socialism

There is no time in the history of the US Democratic Party that they embraced socialism as a party.

Democratic Socialism

This is not actually the same as socialism. It's confusing, I agree. The closest comparison is to "social democratic" parties in Europe, which offer expanded government programs but leave capitalism intact. The simplest definition of socialism is "when the workers own the means of production" (with "means of production" being things like factories, farms, etc. Any business, really). The Democratic Party has never pushed for that and Mamdani is not pushing for that now.

Swede here, if we compare the two political parties in the US to the Swedish political spectrum, the Republicans would be far to the right of even Sverigedemokraterna, the Democrats would be center-right.

What the US calls the left side of the political compass is nowhere near the actual left on a proper political compass.

The US badly needs a new voting system, the current one promotes stagnation and I can't see it ever having more than two realistic choices again.

Democrats aren't socialist but there are socialists who are democrats. The majority of the party are beholden to big donors just like the Republicans and view anything even remotely socialist as not only a threat to their donors but a threat to their position in the party.

The democrats are melting down over Mamdani because he might cause a wave of socialists primarying them.

They are also melting down because the main attack they used against Mamdani - calling him an antisemite when he's really just an anti-zionist - had zero affect. This is huge because it's been a tried and true tactic to use against socialists most famously in the UK against Corbyn.

The DNC are just republican lite, madini upsets thier status quo, aka center right, so not even on the left. the voters may support DS, but the politicians dont at all, all that money that comes with being like the gop is too god to miss.

America is a capitalist nation. The Republicans openly support it. The Democrats less openly support it.

Socialism breaks the mold, it evens the playing field for everyone - people part of the establishment will always oppose it.

Are you joking or seriously asking, I am not joking it is hard to tell genuinely.

Simply put, he's not on their team and as mayor of New York it's a good amount of power and if he wins there it'll encourage more and suddenly they'll have less chums in positions they like and won't get what they want done

For generations, Americans have been raised to believe that socialism and communism are the same thing, and that they're not only bad policy, but actively un-American and evil.

I thought Democrats embraced socialism.

Democrats, the party and politicians, no. Not even close. As much as Fox News would love you to believe that.

Democrats, the voters, much more so. The majority of people in the US are like you. When presented with actual socialist policies, they're on board. But most people are also not engaged enough in politics to recognize that the Democratic party doesn't actually believe in socialist policies, they just vote for "the left". Or, they do recognize it, but feel that they have no better options.

Helping people is woke.

Every transaction has two sides.

If a politician says we can't afford something, what that really means is they see they would be paying for it, not being paid for it.

In short, current admin is corrupt.

Democrats, democratic socialism and socialism are all different things. The Democratic party has different objectives from Democratic socialists. Perhaps it would be helpful to label Democrats as the "center moderate" party, democratic socialists as "left and the Republican party as "fascism".

Liberals hate progressive more than they hate the GOP. But this way Democrats keep saying every election is the most important election in our lifetime. They still expect the vote blue no matter who, so Democrats want nothing more than to have the progressive fall in line.

I hate it here. I want off this ride.

The quick answer is that the Democratic Party isn't socialist. Socialists work against the interests of capitalists and guess who the Democratic Party takes a lot of money from? The few socialists or democratic socialists that try to run through the Democratic party are fighting an uphill battle and are only doing so mostly because the two party system makes it impossible for 3rd parties to win in most cases.

This has always been the case, but what might cause this confusion is that the Democrats appeared to favor more socially oriented policies in the mid 20th century with The New Deal and The Great Society. But the thing to understand about that is:

• Despite creating some social spending programs, they kept capitalists in power.
• They never stopped doing the other part of capitalism: Imperialism.
• There was a lot of pressure from outside the government. Unions were stronger. The Great Depression was the greatest crisis capitalism had seen up until that point, and the success of communist revolutions in other countries could have shown the American working class a different path forward.

In the 90s, with the Soviet Union dissolved and the power of unions thoroughly gutted, the Democrats under Clinton did a realignment to the right. Clinton famously passed welfare "reform" (read: gutting it) calling it "an end to welfare as we know it." Clinton entered us into NAFTA, a trade deal that helped facilitate corporations moving production to other countries to exploit cheaper labor. He passed the Crime Bill which is credited with being a huge contributor to mass incarceration. Etc.

Since then Democrats have looked a lot more like Clinton than FDR, and even FDR wasn't a socialist. So yeah, the people who helped take things away from the working class aren't super thrilled about someone who wants to take some of that stuff back for us.

1 word: pluralities.

Nothing.

Democracy and Capitalism are inextricably linked in American politics. 'Democratic Capitalism' is the predominant social and economic culture.

Changing the capitalism part is as revolting as changing the democracy part.

And that's without trying to disambiguate Social Democracy from Democratic Socialism.

Justice Democrats, progressives, Bernie Sanders, AOC, Mamdani are all outliers – the majority of the Democratic party (and especially the DNC) have dedicated their very souls to maintaining the status quo and maintaining their corporate funding – they are the “white moderate” that MLK was warning as being even more dangerous than KKK – we know the Republicans hate us while the Democrats will pat you on the back as they tell you their hands are tied and this isn’t the time and don’t rock the boat and they know what you want better than you do

He might like do a thing that helps the peasants... Or even hurt the parasite.

Who knows but when you end counter this many enemies on both sides, you know this bro is going the right way. NYC politics is a corruption galore though. He is about to finding out how impotent that can make him. Hope fully he can do something to kick off a wave across US.

People haven't gained the full class consciousness yet but post covid fuckeninng has shook the normie to the core and they asking questions that make daddy very uncomfortable

From the perspective of Democrats mamdani risks actually bettering the status quo for the working class. They fear this because democrats primarily represent the interests of their rich donors who have a lot to lose if the working classes conditions are bettered. Not as many profits to be made if you have to pay your workers more and can't charge exorbitant rents. He is also upsetting the unconditional support for Israel that the Democratic party has settled upon.

From the socialist/communist perspective people like Mamdani are complicated. They can be good in that they often genuinely want to improve the conditions of the working class and often do but are limited by their decision to work within a system designed to oppress the working class. They can only do so much. Democratic socialism is just capitalism with a welfare state. Its great for the workers within the democratic socialist nation but this form of capitalism is only possible through exploitation of a working class abroad, typically in the global south.