Paul Krugman notes:
It’s also true that American political discourse lacks
a widely accepted term for people who don’t believe that the government should
control the means of production but who do believe that we should have policies
to limit economic inequality and prevent avoidable hardship. To find such a
term you need to go to European countries in which it was important to
distinguish between parties supporting a strong social safety net and Communist
parties, which weren’t at all the same thing. In these countries, politicians
like Harris, who supports a free-market economy with a robust social safety
net, are known as social democrats.