I'm a Democrat and not a socialist. n/t

[Lonestarblue]

14. Few if any people in the US are socialists.

The Merriam-Webster definition is “any of various egalitarian economic and political theories or movements advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods.”

True socialism calls for a worker collective or the government to own all means of production and control what gets produced. Obviously the term has been misused deliberately by Republicans for decades to paint Democrats as anti-free market capitalism and anti-wealth (laughable). The closest Mamdani comes to true socialism is his notion that the city should own grocery stores to buy at wholesale prices to lower food costs. He is not calling for the city to own and control all grocery stores in New York.

It’s my belief that if Mamdani wins the election, he will be forced to moderate his ideas somewhat. Few cities have the revenue to provide free bus service, for example. But Mamdani is a threat because he has ideas to benefit average people, and both establishment Democrats and Republicans are trying to derail him because they want the same old politics that have worked for each party in the past. For Republicans, that is racial hatred, claims of uncontrolled immigration of criminal black and brown people, and stoking fear that minorities are taking the country from white people. For Democrats, that is always being the gentlemanly civil party using 50 words (or more) to describe a policy when 20 simple, targeted ones would do. Younger Democrats are changing this dynamic, but the party leaders are stuck on what worked for Obama almost 20 years ago. Younger voters have moved on.