It's funny to me how socialists have to talk to liberals about socialism. Because liberals have this intense, reflexive fear of socialism, so socialists have to kind of coddle them a little. "It's ok, it's not real socialism. Don't worry, you don't have anything to be afraid of. Everything is going to be ok." And, honestly, I get it. Marxism-Leninists have made it really hard for people to trust socialists. The ML nonsense of a "vanguard" having total, often very violently enforced authority over a society is not appealing to liberals. Nor is it appealing to socialists who understand that socialism is true democracy and that true democracy is socialism.

That said, liberals aren't just scared of MLism, they're afraid of true democracy, too. That's why their version of democracy comes with the qualifier "liberal." They have established that their support for democracy is conditional. Their support for democracy is conditioned on said democracy being sufficiently liberal, and they will withdraw their support for any democracy that is not sufficiently liberal, often referring to such a democracy as "mob rule."