General Discussion

trying to poison the label much as they did with 'liberal' or 'woke'.

I think tone and messaging might differentiate democratic socialists from 'mainstreamers', along with the extent to which corporatism influences their policies.

So...in my humble and non-academic opinion, progressives in general tend to be a mix of democratic socialism and corporatism and there's a significant range of percentages. GOPrs generally are also both but with a smaller percentage of DS, larger of corporatism, and a healthy percentage of authoritarianism thrown in.

I've kept a DU post somewhere in which the poster describes the last several decades as a battle between the corporatists and the authoritarians, with the authoritarians winning at the moment. I would welcome swing of the pendulum in which a third influential DS presence would look out for the interests of the 90% rather than the top 10% (corporatists) or the top .1% (authoritarians).