What is going on in the Democratic Party? What is democratic socialism?

The Dem Party split

A NYT analysis of the primary for New York mayor indicates that there is deep confusion and division in the Democratic Party (DP). Way back in 2016-2017, I used to think that the rise of Trump in the GOP would split that party in two. Boy was that wrong. Now it is seriously looking like Trump, MAGA elites and their demagoguery, deceit, slanders and crackpottery is gonna split the DP in two. The NYT writes (not paywalled): "A New Political Star Emerges Out of a Fractured Democratic Party -- The emergence of Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, is likely to divide national Democrats, who are already torn about what the party should stand for. .... That Mr. Mamdani had such success while running on a far-left agenda, including positions that once were politically risky in New York — like describing Israel’s actions in Gaza as genocide and calling for new taxes on business — may challenge the boundaries of party orthodoxy and unnerve national Democratic leaders. .... “There is no doubt that Trump and Republicans will try and seize on him as a kind of exemplar of what the Democratic Party stands for,” Mr. Axelrod said. “The thing is, he seems both principled and agile and deft enough to confront those sort of conventional plays.” .... The National Republican Congressional Committee gleefully declared Mr. Mamdani the “new face of the Democrat Party.” " (emphasis added)

Yup, there is absolutely no doubt that divisive, demagogic Trump and MAGA propaganda are gonna have a field day with this. They have already started their dark free speech fun 'n games.

Meanwhile, the DP establishment is in a state of shock that their guy, Andrew Cuomo lost, and lost hard to a democratic socialist. This looks like the beginning of either a true DP split into two warring groups, or a rejection of the established leadership and its neoliberal politics. Warring groups seems to be more likely than rejection and replacement of the establishment. A third party is very unlikely. A broken DP seems to be the most likely outcome at present (and subject to change). 

What is democratic socialism (DS)?

Democratic socialism is a political and economic philosophy that advocates for political democracy alongside social ownership or control of the means of production. The ideology combines democratic political systems with socialist economic principles, seeking to achieve fundamental changes to capitalism through democratic processes rather than by revolution.

Although we can confidently expect MAGA demagoguery to say otherwise thousands of times, Democratic socialism is different from Marxism–Leninism, which is authoritarian and anti-democratic. DSs oppose Stalinism and the Marxist–Leninist economic planning system. DSs advocate for systematically transforming the economy from capitalism to socialism where the state owns essentially all means of production. 

Democratic socialists argue that capitalism is inherently incompatible with the values of freedom, equality, and solidarity, and that these ideals can only be achieved through the realization of a socialist society. The ideology emphasizes economic democracy, workplace democracy, and workers' self-management within various forms of socialist economic organization.

Rut roh, a wabbit hole

DS vs SD vs Capitalism -- A damaging overreaction?

All of the following was informed by a series of Qs to Pxy with varying complexity that provoked a series of mostly complex responses, all of which are fully available at this link. 

What New Yorkers voted for is a DS politician who is maybe about an 8 on a 1-10 scale of socialism, with 10 being pure socialism and 1 being unregulated capitalism with oligarchy. I doubt that most of those voters really understood what they were voting for or how damaging a major DS politician is likely going to be for the DP. The message they constantly heard from Mamdani was economic relief for the lower classes. That is something that most MAGA rank and file voters also very much want.  

For context, there is an intermediate kind of socialist political-economic ideology that very likely has a far better chance of gaining traction with the public than DS. It is called social democracy (SD). SD is maybe about a 6 on the 1-10 scale. Pxy analyzed and compared key DS and SD traits and summarized it in the table below.

In one question, I asked Pxy to evaluate the two paragraphs of text above for reasonableness. It said the socialism estimates were reasonable. But it pushed back on my assertion of (1) New York voter ignorance, and (2) coming deep discord in the DP. My assessment of a likely major split in the DP is possible but not certain. My assertion of voter ignorance stands as mostly correct after Pxy reassessed the issue. 

Yes, this is just one set of Qs&As with Pxy. The overall analysis of trouble in the DP could be more wrong than right. Other framing of the issues could lead to different responses. According to Pxy, the socialists in the DP will probably have a hard to impossible time reconciling with the neoliberals. There's the possible DP split.