No he doesn’t. Democratic socialism isn’t socialism as in the GDR or Venezuela.

All Scandinavian countries first and foremost. Germany could also be considered pretty socialist, at least by American standards.

Okay then please name all the far left politicians that currently hold a political office in the US.  Oh, there are none that what I though keep trying buddy.

You seem reasonable here, but this completely negates your point about Bernie Sanders being a "socialist". When has he done something to make you think he wants a Venezuelan model? The countries he most often refers to as a source of inspiration are nordic countries. Which are decidedly not socialist in any strict sense of the word.

I was gonna reply that they aren't socialist countries when he replied.

Bernie has made proposals that are socialist in nature and not something normal democrats would propose. He's very far left and basically a socialist. Democratic socialist is just a nicer way of saying socialist. Whenever someone tries implementing something people wouldn't like, they'll do it slowly. That applies mostly to governments and businesses. Bernie would turn the country into Venezuela in a few years. 

I've read and watched interviews, debates and saw comments that lead me to believe that he is. Too many fixate on the overly simplistic definition of it that they can't see the trees for the forest. What would the implementation of socialism look like policy-wise in the us? What would those policies be? 

To some of the others, when I'm talking about socialism, it doesn't mean that I'm talking about anything with social in it. If it's that easy to get people to conflates things, I might start using social with the things the left doesn't like. 😹

Just because I don't like socialism (because it's too idealistic and authoritarian), doesn't mean that I'm against social safety nets and the like. It just depends on the policy.

That is because he is an Independent candidate and pretty much as been one for the most part of his political career the only reason he ran as Democrat in 2016 is because you have a zero percent chance of winning the presidency running as a Independent or third party candidate.  Also the reason he is called a democratic socialist is because that is what he would be if he was a politician in Europe or most other developed countries instead of the US.  Also if most democrats had balls instead of being corporate whores just like most Republicans they would actually propose a lot of policies that are socialist in nature.

Bernie was praising it before they started to eat their pets.

Redistribution of wealth from rich and middle class, social programs increased to cover everything like utilities/place to stay, increased size of government and it's authority.

I go by the normal definition of it but I also take in mind how it would translate into policy.

So what are you even implying about Bernie Sanders? Do you think he's socialist or not? Are the nordic countries socialist? If you use socialism in a non-standard meaning of the word, you sort of have to clarify what definition you're using. Has Bernie made any comments that made you think he wants to collectivize all US companies?

I'll just agree to disagree with ya. We're the opposites on this so there's no point in discussing it with ya.

By this I assume you mean that Sanders wants to expand the welfare state and basically emulate FDR, if I'm wrong in that assumption then do you have a specific example? The Democrats are largely a neoliberal party now so yes most of them wouldn't propose what Sanders' policies but this is something more exclusive to America.

As far as I know now, social democracy and democratic socialism has been fused to more or less mean the same thing (wasn't always the case but that's not really relevant here). Yes it does sugar up socialism by trying to offer a system that can work with and reform capitalism and call it socialism (basically a welfare state). Many socialists of course have a problem with this so called "socialism".

Venezuela under Chavez was a social democracy with an extensive welfare state, yes. Sanders appreciates the Nordic model that he wants to emulate in the US, which is also a system of social democracy.

However, one of the problems (there were many, many others such as property rights) with Venezuela is almost the entire economy is based on oil, and when oil prices plummeted in 2014, the whole economy fell into a death spiral.  All that oil money was used to fund Venezuela's social services and things went well while oil was high, their mistake was the lack of diversity in the economy. Venezuela faced a similar crisis in the 1980s and it appears they haven't learned much. The US economy is much more diverse and resilient than Venezuela's, the two are not really comparable. Does this mean Sanders' policies would not have a negative effect on the economy? Of course not, but economic harm does not instantly equate with economic collapse.