Actually, I do too. And I try to avoid calling our friends on the other side "liberals". I suppose its a pet peeve, but I hate the way the word has been mis-used. Depending on the person and the context, I prefer Democrat, or Left, or often as not "populist". Populist, I think, is often very accurate, it doesn't sound like a pejorative (although to me it is).
Populism is the default political persuasion of most people who just go about their daily affairs and don't give a lot of thought to politics. Populism finds political expression in occasionally left-leaning socialist policies, occasionally right-leaning socialist policies, but almost always "socialist" or state-centered solutions. Populists always want to know what government is going to do for me, and when something offends their sensibilities, why isn't there a law.
These are the great mass of old-line Democrats, the ones in your or my families, for example. We manage to make common cause with them occasionally, where we seldom are able to make common cause with the Insane Left.
Bill O'Reilly comes to my mind. His stance on the "assault weapons" ban was what first caught my attention. After his populism was confirmed by his stance on other issues, I lost interest. If you look at domestic politics from my individual point of view, how someone views the Second Amendment is the single issue that best predicts their political stance on other issues. I'd say it works about 90 percent of the time, IMHO.
Yes!Yes!Yes!
I prefer to call them leftists, or democrats depending on which end of the extreme they lie. I actually like the term populist...but am wary because it has been hijacked throughout history by fringe neo-nazi and neo-communist type parties...time to clean up the political language.
Time for us to stop allowing the left to define the meaning of our politics and our language.