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...is that mid-to late-20th century liberals became identified with expanding access and rights to those who had been discriminated against -- blacks, gays, women, the urban poor. It did not include any coherent, vocal critique of American capitalism. The American system, it seemed, was just perfect -- except that it was racist, sexist, homophobic and insufficiently protective of the environment.
As such, it left white working-class and middle-class people completely out of its group of "people we care about." The image of upper-middle-class whites lifting up poor African-Americans while looking down on working-class white Americans had a real kernel of truth to it. The Republicans found that opening and used it to reign over America for the past 30 years.
The liberal party tradition, starting in England, was strongly identified with property rights and laissez-faire capitalism, which is why most left-of-center Democrats actually are more philosophically similar to European Social Democrats than to European Liberals.
Unless liberals somehow incorporate a more populist philosophy on economic issues to the liberal "brand," "liberal" will be a problematic term for American politics. But who knows what the future brings in terms of re-alignments and the branding of political parties? Over the next ten years, we may be in for an entirely new synthesis.
