Why YSK: I’ve noticed in recent years more people using “neoliberal” to mean “Democrat/Labor/Social Democrat politicians I don’t like”. This confusion arises from the different meanings “liberal” has in American politics and further muddies the waters.
Neoliberalism came to the fore during the 80’s under Reagan and Thatcher and have continued mostly uninterrupted since. Clinton, both Bushs, Obama, Blair, Brown, Cameron, Johnson, and many other world leaders and national parties support neoliberal policies, despite their nominal opposition to one another at the ballot box.
It is important that people understand how neoliberalism has reshaped the world economy in the past four decades, especially people who are too young to remember what things were like before. Deregulation and privatization were touted as cost-saving measures, but the practical effect for most people is that many aspects of our lives are now run by corporations who (by law!) put profits above all else. Neoliberalism has hollowed out national economies by allowing the offshoring of general labor jobs from developed countries.
In the 80’s and 90’s there was an “anti-globalization” movement of the left that sought to oppose these changes. The consequences they warned of have come to pass. Sadly, most organized opposition to neoliberal policies these days comes from the right. Both Trump and the Brexit campaign were premised on reinvigorating national economies. Naturally, both failed, in part because they had no cohesive plan or understanding that they were going against 40 years of precedent.
So, yes, establishment Democrats are neoliberals, but so are most Republicans.
I pointed out the error in your implit assumption in your “argument” that Identity Politics counts as being leftwing.
A self-proclaimed fight for Equality that doesn’t address the worst kinds of equality out there (usually wealth-related) is at best a “theatre of equality” and at worst profound hypocrisy.
Now, if the Democrats more broadly weren’t quite as lavishingly a “party of business” and “relaxed about wealth” one might say that perhaps it really was a party fighting for Equality and were Identity Politics was but a facet of a greater fight, in which case it would all count as leftwing, only that’s not at all the case - if you loudly help a few whilst activelly fucking up the many (often covertly fucking up the very people you just loudly proclaimed you helped), that’s just the far too common image management anchored on late XX-century marketing theories, not acting out of principle.
So there really isn’t much leftwing-anything in the US Democrats.
As for your idea of the European politicial spectrum, it really doesn’t match what I’ve seen having lived in 4 different countries in Europe and speaking the language of a few more - you might be confusing what gets shown about European politics in the English language media you frequent (which is usually the loudmouths saying outrageous things and a handful of government measures here and there which can be spinned - whether they really are or not - as anti-immigrant) with the actual totality of the European political spectrum.
From what I’ve observed, even now when there are a lot more anti-immigrant populists on the scene than in the heady pre-2008-crash days, they still represent maybe at most 1/4 of all the political spectrum (granted, I don’t know the politics of EE that much, so maybe it’s more there)
PS: And just for clarity, I’m not saying that in social terms the Democrats aren’t more “fair” than a lot of Europe’s political spectrum, what I’m saying is that because of their positions on every other angle of equality and on advancing the general principle of “the greatest good for the greatest number” (which they are not, at all, advancing, quite the contrary) their seemingly socially more fair side might very well be just theatre and even if it’s not, it’s not enough leftwing to make up for the broader concern with making the most people live better (as imperfect as it is) in most of the European Political Spectrum.