*Progressives, Liberals, Democrats – take your pick, I don’t know what the preferred appellation is anymore.

Well, “Democrat” is easy enought to define, but it’s important to remember that many liberals and progressives do not consider themselves Democrats.
As for liberal vs. progressive, Sirota does a pretty good job explaining the difference.

I often get asked what the difference between a “liberal” and a “progressive” is. The questions from the media on this subject are always something like, “Isn’t ‘progressive’ just another name for ‘liberal’ that people want to use because ‘liberal’ has become a bad word?”
The answer, in my opinion, is no – there is a fundamental difference when it comes to core economic issues. It seems to me that traditional “liberals” in our current parlance are those who focus on using taxpayer money to help better society. A “progressive” are those who focus on using government power to make large institutions play by a set of rules…
Let’s be clear – most progressives are also liberals, and liberal goals in better funding America’s social safety net are noble and critical. It’s the other direction that’s the problem. Many of today’s liberals are not fully comfortable with progressivism as defined in these terms. Many of today’s Democratic politicians, for instance, are simply not comfortable taking a more confrontational posture towards large economic institutions (many of whom fund their campaigns) – institutions that regularly take a confrontational posture towards America’s middle-class.

I think the confusion is natural in that politicians pick up the buzzwords that test well in focus groups and then (mis)use them. For instance, I never found Clinton to be very progressive when she was my Senator in NY. None the less…
archive.newsmax.com/archives/ic/2007/7/24/125521.shtml
I always considered her and President Clinton to be classic neoliberals, essentially what Sirota describes above as a “liberal.”
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/neoliberal

Progressivism is a subcategory of liberalism that advocates for strong centralized government controlled by an elite class of experts and “forward thinkers” who dictate what is best for the population as a whole.

“Either way they believe in big government having a preeminent role as the head of society with individual rights subordinated to the concept of the ‘collective good’ as determined by whichever tyrant is in power at the time.”
That’s a strawman view of progressives. Let’s talk about military spending or state surveillance and other police state powers and see who’s in favor of smaller government and individual rights then (granted, true libertarians will actually agree with progressives on this).

We have to remind the American people of what they once knew but seem to have forgotten: that they don’t want BIG government, or SMALL government; they don’t want MORE government, or LESS government; they want government ON THEIR SIDE.
– William Blum