Populist Reform of the Democratic Party

Negative or not, it's what it's called. Populism can (not always, but often enough) refer to reforms within a capitalist society, and that is not at all what we need. The people who feel strongly negative about socialism are, quite literally, dying off. A recent-ish poll by the Huffington Post showed that over half of young people think socialism is positive--that's a staggeringly high number in this country. Let's call it it what it is and be proud of it! I worry that we will fall into the same trap that liberals did when many of them refused to call themselves liberals because of worries about connotations. I think that we need not to worry about the way we message as much as the message itself--people will hear the truth if they choose to hear it, and the people who we really have to worry about (TPTB) won't care what we call it in the slightest. If we called it populism instead, they will simply demonize the term populism. At least this way we can continue in that long and beautiful tradition of Marx, Engels, Luxembourg, Trotsky, and Lenin!