Dan Merica doesn't get it, either

In a piece at CNN, he writes,

There is a difference between socialism and democratic socialism. 

While socialists believe in government takeover of certain large sectors of the economy, democratic socialists see government intervention -- along with private businesses -- in certain portions of the economy, like college and health care.

No, that's not democratic socialism, which is just socialism with a democratic government, though, over the years, its declining advocates have called for actual nationalization of ever smaller chunks of the economy and, in America, have often settled for public enterprises coexisting side-by-side with private ones in an economy overwhelmingly in private hands, as well see in medicine and education where we in American have both public and private insurers and hospitals and both public and private schools operating in the most capitalist economy in the world.

Advocacy of government intervention in an economy overwhelmingly or entirely comprising enterprises and a market outside of itself, hence a capitalist economy, is just progressivism, aka social democracy, the economic portion of the liberal agenda since the days of the New Deal.

Communism in the familiar Leninist-Marxist tradition is just socialism with its least human face, involving totalitarian dictatorship by a revolutionary party imposing the most extensive public ownership on the means of production ever seen on the planet, in every case by violence and in some notable cases by the greatest violence ever inflicted by any government in history on its own people.

Bernie's problem defining himself is that all his life he's been vague and all over the map, advocating little to no socialism in electoral agendas that have comprised numerous social democratic bits to the left of mainstream liberalism while offering aid and comfort to such undemocratic socialist states as Cuba and undemocratic socialist movements in various Latin American states, much as have mushy-headed liberal fellow travelers as well as Americans of the radical left.

And Gene Debs, whose photo is on Bernie's office wall, while no Lenin and no Che, was also pretty hard left compared to FDR, Truman, or even Clement Atlee.