After seeing some discussion on this among a few reporters, here's my two cents on how to distinguish between the major camps in NYS politics, if anyone in the press finds it helpful.

Broadly speaking, I'd identify three categories: establishment, progressive & socialist (1/8).

The establishment is chiefly concerned with management of the status quo. Prefers only minimal new regulation & redistribution. May tolerate a bit more if the left is highly mobilized, but will enforce red lines. It has direct relationships with capital & doesn't hide them. (2/8)

Progressives favor substantial new regulation & redistribution in a capitalist framework. Essential goods & services are procured on the market, most capital is privately held. Indirect relationships with capital & the establishment (funding their NGOs) limit radicalism. (3/8)

Socialists favor bringing broad swaths of the economy under public or worker control. Utilities, healthcare under state ownership; huge expansion of the state's share of housing stock; co-determination & other mechanisms for worker control of firms; wealth redistribution. (4/8)

The socialist/progressive distinction can get a bit blurry. Some progressives do nominally favor removing some essential goods from the market (utilities, health insurance) & substantial expansions of worker power. But socialists extend that logic to the entire economy. (5/8)

We imagine a future where medicine is fully nationalized (like the UK), where a majority of people live in housing owned by the state or tenant-controlled trusts, where all workers manage their own firms & all their profits, either directly or through state intermediaries (6/8)

There's also a big theory of change distinction. Progressives believe (or must act as though) their most ambitious goals could be won through normal legislative bargaining. Socialists acknowledge theirs require mass mobilization disruptive to the present economic order. (7/8)

Obviously this is simplified for Twitter, and people often brand themselves differently from how they act in practice.

But if the press could make a real effort to not just lump in everyone to the left of Cuomo together, they would do a tremendous service to their readers. (8/8)