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What 'liberal' stands for is not simply a matter of the Republicans controlling the spin. From the late-60s on, the Democrats' effort to keep their Big Tent full meant that all sorts of initiatives, concepts, and the Identity Politics approach - often incompatible with democracy, democratic politics, and even each other - were accepted in some form by the Democratic Party which was the 'liberal' Party and thus these intiatives became 'liberal' mostly by default.
The 'civil liberatarianism' and 'renewed interest in checks on the imperial presidency' were offset by the awefull and still under-appreciated confluence of Identity Politics, the sense of 'revolution', and the Progressive (and revolutionary) self-righteous determination to do an end-run around an 'inefficient' and too-slow democratic politics and citizenry so that a de-fact vanguard elite that knew better and that 'got it' could effect their desired change. It undermined not only the Democrats' cohesion as a Party of the people but also as a Party supporting the deliberative and mature processes of a democratic Republic. (And the Republicans, inspired by Atwater and his spawn, raced in to fill the vacuum - alas.)
If 'liberals can be revolutionary' or can foment 'violent revolution' (Europe in 1848, I guess) that can never be the case here because the whole ground of the American polity is that the democratic process precludes violent and revolutionary change. Far too many movements of the late-Sixties, however, used 'revolution' and 'revolutionary' way too much as a metaphor when they weren't actually trying to nurture violent revolution (in a 'good' cause, of course).
A modern 'liberal' is not Liberal and the whole word has to be put back up on blocks until word and concept can be examined and a new connection agreed upon.
