I can guarantee you that neither one of them were or are democratic socialists. Two things:

One of the central tenets of socialism is that labor manages the means of production and has a right to the fruits of their labor (product). Under socialism, there is no capitalist that extracts the surplus value of labor and deems it for himself as profit.

There is no need for the adjective "democratic" to precede "socialist." Socialism is inherently democratic, both politically and economically.

... so as not to alarm the rubes. No national candidate in this country is going to suggest labor managing the means of production.

There was an interesting chart at DU a day or so ago, showing the different countries which had adopted some form of state-subsidized healthcare. What was interesting about the list was that none of the former Communist Bloc satellites were on the list. Well, Albania, maybe. Funny how a "socialist" thing like universal health care is only practiced in countries that are not socialist.

-- Mal

The former communist bloc didn't practice socialism, much less the form espoused by their hero, Marx. The Bolsheviks saw to it that that would never happen. During the "transition" and the Civil War, the Bolsheviks managed to gerry-mander the soviets, replace delegates with party partisans, smash general strikes (and rebellions such as Kronstadt and Petrograd), and crush their socialist and anarchist rivals, so that they could replace the old ruling class with a managerial bureaucratic class of capitalists.

If you're interested, "What Was the USSR: Towards a Theory of the Deformation of Value Under State Capitalism" is a great, if quite long, read explaining the state of economic relations from several Trotskyist perspectives (as a degenerated workers state), to anarchist perspectives.

Many of us insist that Democratic Socialism is DIFFERENT than classic 'Socialism' ... It relies on the establishment of laws within the legislative construct provided for in the constitution, where laws are written, debated, voted up or down, and then signed into law by the President.

FDR ruled under such a system, and we appreciate the New Deal and the changes it brought to regular American citizens ...

The classic model of socialism ? ... Sorry ... That is not going to fly ... You will find very few takers for your version ... We will never get that kind of socialism here ...

As the OP said: FDR heralded an era of Democratic Socialism that was immensely beneficial for regular American citizens ...

THAT is what we want - nothing more and nothing less ...

Was there only one? Hell, there were different versions within Marxism alone. Outside of Marxist thought, you had other variants, and then you had the anarchist tradition of socialism.

Democratic socialism is socialism. And socialist philosophy has central tenets that the many variants agreed upon.

Under socialism, capitalists do not exist.

FDR said it himself, he enacted the New Deal to "save capitalism from itself."