Shakespeare posed this question a while back, in his masterpiece Romeo And Juliet. Since the two lovers were from families in a longstanding feud with each other, Juliet begins her famous "balcony scene" railing against how fate has given her new love the wrong last name. Here's how she expressed her frustration:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? It is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? That which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

I was reminded of this when reading an article today titled: "What Exactly Is A Democratic Socialist?" in the Washington Post. Unlike their editorials (which have gotten laughably rightwing and pro-Trump), the article was a fairly straightforward look at the label and how it has been changing the Democratic Party. The article answers its titular question with:

The definition differs slightly depending on whom you talk to, but the basic agenda includes universal health care, universal college, universal child care, publicly held housing and a significant increase in the minimum wage.

"What democratic socialism says is our core needs, like food and shelter, has to be the most basic needs for every single human being, but most especially working people," [Melat] Kiros said.

To pay for it, democratic socialists generally propose taxing billionaires. They also argue that investments in health care or housing will actually save taxpayers in the long run.

. . .

Overall, those policies reach farther than the positions espoused by more mainstream Democrats (some Senate candidates support a public option for health care, such as universal Medicaid, but not eliminating all private insurance). But they are not the same thing as communism, which calls for the public takeover of property, business and the entire economy with the aim of even distribution.

[Melat Kiros is a democratic socialist who defeated a 30-year incumbent in a House primary last month in Colorado, I should point out.]

Overall, this is an impressively evenhanded definition of the term. The problem, however, is that not everyone defines it the same way -- even among Democrats. And the bigger problem (possibly) is that Republicans are making an enormous push to define not just Democratic Socialists but the entire Democratic Party as "communist." That's their midterm strategy, from Donald Trump on down. Which is why I started wondering about the whole "a rose would smell as sweet" concept.

To begin with, there are democratic socialists and there are Democratic Socialists. Technically, the term is properly capitalized only when talking about the members of the Democratic Socialists of America. The D.S.A. is not a full-blown political party, but instead one of those advocacy groups that tries to get its members elected no matter what mainstream political party they belong to (or not belong to, in the case of Independents). Not every candidate or officeholder that is described as a democratic socialist (including the ones who openly embrace the label) is a "card-carrying member" of the D.S.A. (to use a Cold War phrase, which seems appropriate). For instance, Wikipedia identifies Representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani as full members of D.S.A. -- but not Senator Bernie Sanders (who does identify as a "democratic socialist" without being an actual D.S.A. member).

This leads to some confusion, obviously. Some Democrats support certain parts of the D.S.A. agenda without embracing the "democratic socialist" label, others fully self-identify as "democratic socialists" without being D.S.A. members, and some are proud members of the organization. Republicans are already trying to get people to not only ignore these subtleties but to paint all Democrats with the "communist" brush.

The D.S.A. is a rather loose organization, which "has a decentralized structure in which local chapters and ideological caucuses have significant autonomy." But its stated agenda is more radical than most Democrats could support, with "a long-term aim of social ownership and democratic control of the American economy." This is true socialism (by definition), but it's not what most Democrats would support.

The D.S.A. has grown enormously in the past decade, ever since Bernie Sanders entered the national political spotlight. In 2015, the D.S.A. had "about 6,000 members," but it has now grown to "more than 120,000." That sounds like a lot, but it really isn't, when you measure it on a national scale (The Republican Party and Democratic Party have memberships in the tens of millions, by contrast). However, the D.S.A. is obviously growing in popularity, due mostly to a huge surge of younger voters joining up. They are also growing in significance within the Democratic Party.

The problem with the D.S.A. is the perennial problem of all far-left groups. They have so many strident believers in so many different ideological flavors that they wind up spending far too much time and energy squabbling among themselves. Think of how the "Occupy Wall Street" movement eventually collapsed, for a good example of how this can all play out. The other big problem with the D.S.A. is that they are indeed a lot more radical than most Democratic voters are.

Which left me wondering -- especially after reading some of the interesting reader comments to the Post article -- whether it would behoove some Democrats to distance themselves from the (capitalized) Democratic Socialists label. Fortunately, there's a good and easy way to achieve this.

What most democratic socialist politicians believe in and support isn't the full-on radical definition of socialism (government ownership of the means of production), but instead merely expanding the social safety net in a big and dramatic way. In Europe, they would be called something slightly different: Social Democrats. Think of the Scandinavian countries with high taxes on high earners and a cradle-to-grave social safety net, rather than the old Soviet Union.

This label not only provides a graceful way for Democratic politicians to avoid being lumped in with the D.S.A., but it also has the benefit of being far more accurate a political label. A politician who does support taxing the rich and corporations more in order to pay for free child care or universal health care could state that they were "a Social Democrat, as that term is used in Europe" while disavowing the more radical positions of the D.S.A. This would mean there wouldn't be the whole "is it capitalized or not" problem with the democratic socialist label. Another good suggestion from the article's comments was to start using the term "I'm an F.D.R. Democrat," which also has the benefit of being ideologically correct. F.D.R. was the closest thing America has ever had to a socialist president, but he is universally loved (among Democrats, at least), so the association is a good one to try to make.

I'm not entirely sure why the term Social Democrat has never really been used here in America, I will admit. The policies have never been fully embraced by either major American political party -- that's probably a big part of the reason why. But the policies themselves are actually wildly popular, when Americans are polled about the specifics without any political labels attached.

Republicans are already fully engaged with tarring all Democrats with the "communist" brush. This is pretty laughable, but it could also be at least somewhat effective. Most Americans simply do not understand the difference in technical definitions of socialism and communism, and Republicans are going to work hard to blur those lines as much as they can.

Democrats who aren't full-on Democratic Socialists but still support bold ideas for strengthening the social safety net and making billionaires pay their fair share of taxes could avoid the problem by rebranding their own political ideology. It would admittedly add to the confusion at first -- because they'd have to patiently explain what a "Social Democrat" is and what they stand for, but it would be a convenient way to reject the whole Democratic Socialist label (and GOP demonization thereof). As Juliet said, it might just be a problem of "'Tis but thy name that is my enemy." It's certainly worth trying, at any rate.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant