Columnist Clarence Page once declared that “the greatest triumph that conservatives ever achieved was to make the term “liberal” a dirty word.

So they turned to the more innocuous term “progressives.” After all, who’s against progress?

Now conservatives are on the cusp of a second victory: “Progressives” are abandoning and shying away from the very word they turned to when they gave up on “liberal.”

Pennsylvania’s Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the leading Democratic candidate for Senate, wants to be called a “populist” not a progressive.

Erica Smith, who is running for a vacant House seat in North Carolina, is using the term “New Deal” to describe her philosophy.

Dwight Bullard, an NAACP leader, explains the sudden shift in terminology: the shift “is a reaction to progressivism somehow being attached to socialism or communism. You have a lot of apprehension [among] people who just are scared.”

Gee, we wonder why people would be associating the “progressive” movement and its call for multi-trillions of dollars of more spending and debt with socialism?