huh?
Democratic Socialists don't reject SOCIALISM.
They came to exist because they rejected the Soviet style VANGUARDISM. The Marxist-Leninist vanguard, claimed to be "democratic" but they were democratic in name only. Division among socialists, started early on, and continued throughout the 20th century.
The democratic socialists wanted a more authentically democratic form of socialism. But they definitely wanted socialism, that is they wanted the democratic ownership and controls of the means of production. They thought that the Bolshevik model of socialism just replaced private property with the rigid totalitarian control of a bureaucratic state apparatus that was beyond the reach of true democratic control. They were certainly right about that.
Whether a truly DEMOCRATIC socialism is still possible, well that's a different question.
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