They are not labels, they are descriptors, and ideology matters in your choice of government. Populism is a short sighted slippery slope, especially when you’re compromising with opponents who are doggedly statist and your cheerleaders are an uninformed mob.
1776 was “populist” too.
Sometimes, you don’t get a good choice. Sure, you can play fantasy games like Erik Erikson, “We’re going 3rd party with a moral man!” and hand it to Hillary/Sanders, but that is worse than stupid.
Sometimes, your choice is not between Jefferson and Adams and Madison, but between Stalin and Hitler and Mussolini. Or Herod, Caligula or Nero.
That’s where we are, now. If given a choice, at gun point, of a bullet to the head, ingesting a teaspoon of cyanide, or ingesting a teaspoon of arsenic, no other options, no refusal, pick one right now or get the bullet, there actually is a logical and rational “least bad” choice.
That’s where we are. And it’d going to get much worse. We’ll have 1968-sized riots all summer and all the way through the election, if not worse than 68. We’re going to look back to March 2017 as “the good old days, when everything worked.”
Every day with electricity is a blessing. People have no idea how fast we can slip off our techno perch. Civil disorder that impacts critical infrastructure can easily cascade into a dirty civil war of disappearances and assassinations, similar to Argentina or Northern Ireland in the 70s. Or worse.
These are the good old days. Enjoy them while they last.