I hear what you’re saying, and I’m not trying to nitpick. But I do have a few issues with this.
The rise of Trumpism has blown the US Overton Window wide open, and the language is now shifting back towards international/historical norms. Overt socialism is no longer absent from American politics, and pretty much all socialists actively reject liberalism.
The American use of liberal as a synonym for left is not just a quirk of linguistics. It’s an artefact of the 20th century suppression of American socialism.
Both international and American centre (when measured by policy-based opinion polls) is around the Social Democrat position, which is basically the Berniecrats. Moving rightwards from the left, we have:
Revolutionary Socialists → Reformist Socialists → Social Democrats → Liberals → Conservatives → Fascists
The right wing of the Democrats (AKA the establishment/corporate wing, which is pretty much all of the Congressfolk) are true liberals. Liberalism began as the party of deregulated capitalism, and it still is. There is a reason why it’s called neoliberalism rather than neoconservatism.
The establishment/corporate Democrats did not abandon or betray liberalism; they’re returning it to its roots.
Once the threat of Cold War competition dissolved, the concessions to the working class that characterise social liberalism (AKA the right edge of the Social Democrats) were seen as no longer necessary. Hence the rightward shift of the Democrats over recent decades.
