Since I've never seen anyone else talk about this in much detail, I'm gonna write an overly long thread about how the term "progressive" has morphed into something essentially meaningless, compared to what it was in the recent past.
According to this Politico article, the delightfully aggressive incoming co-chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Pramila Jayapal, is of the same mind as I am on this semantic question (although the article itself is non-committal). politico.com/story/2018/12/…
So. Back in the mid-2000s liberal/lefty/anti-Bush blogosphere (Daily Kos, Crooks and Liars, Firedoglake, etc.), aka the "netroots," there was a distinction made between "liberals" and "progressives."
As far as I could tell from context, liberals were generally understood to be good on contemporary social issues concerning oppression, marginalized social groups, all the various "-isms", etc. The stuff you should know to live in the 21st century.
Progressives were generally understood to agree with all of this, but ALSO (not "instead") advocated - at minimum - a return to old-school Democratic politics rooted in the New Deal, labor organizing, antitrust regulation, etc., as part of an overall critique of corporate power.
Back before the apocalypse, this was frequently referred to in the blogosphere as the "Sanders-Warren wing" of the Democratic Party. The wing that was correct, but couldn't adequately fundraise because they wanted to curb the power of wealth.
The term "progressive" was consciously chosen for its history of describing left-leaners with economic critiques, dating back to the Progressive Era in the early 20th century.
The Progressive Era was a reaction against the corporate-dominated Gilded Age, when rapid industrialization and laissez-faire capitalism produced dizzying social change, vast income inequality, and money-driven political corruption.
Progressives championed a host of reforms, including trust-busting, the income tax, anti-graft/fraud measures, direct democracy (i.e. popular election of senators), education, and women's suffrage.
Unfortunately, this being the early 20th century, many progressives of the era were still ardent segregationists (including some in the women's suffrage movement, as Angela Davis will tell you). Plus, Prohibition didn't work out so well.
Early progressivism wasn't the territory of one party, but rather factions within each. Woodrow Wilson (an ardent economic reformer, but a segregationist) was a Democrat. Trust-Bustin' Teddy Roosevelt started out as a Republican, as did Wisconsin Sen. Fightin' Bob La Follette.
It's also notable that these progressives saw themselves not as radical leftists, but as saving capitalism from itself by controlling its excesses. The concept of "regulated competition," as advanced by Wilson-appointed Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, became the blueprint.
After WWI, business conservatives took control of both major parties, striking back against labor organizing and government regulation. The technological and cultural highs of the Roaring Twenties (boom!) collapsed into the Great Depression (bust!).
The Great Depression cleared the way for the transformational election of class traitor Franklin D. Roosevelt (the only president ever to serve more than two terms), whose activist philosophy of progressive government consolidated power into the Democratic Party for a generation.
Among FDR's New Deal reforms: Social Security, the guaranteed right to collective bargaining, the Glass-Steagall Act separating commercial and investment banking, and a number of Keynesian economic programs in which governmental enterprises hired workers directly.
All had the aim of reducing the financial and political power of big business over the economy and the everyday lives of Americans. The middle class boomed, especially after WWII, and more Americans than ever before were able to share in the country's general prosperity.
Despite sending Japanese-Americans to concentration camps during WWII, FDR was (in OTHER areas) socially progressive enough (FOR HIS TIME) to begin constructing the modern Democratic Party as a home for socially marginalized groups like African-Americans, Jews, and Catholics.
The guiding philosophy of FDR's regime lasted for decades after. Even when Eisenhower won the presidency as a Republican, he didn't really attempt to dismantle the New Deal. Same with Nixon following LBJ's Great Society programs, which included Medicare.
Social Security and Medicare have proven much more difficult to dismantle than other parts of the New Deal and Great Society. Why? Because they're universal. Everyone who pays in gets benefits back when eligible. Even rich people have skin in the game.
By contrast, programs that tax the rich but only help the poor tend to be the first on the chopping block for budget cuts when conservatives are in power. Rich people don't see a "return" on their "investment," so they don't care. Or, you know, they care even less than usual.
The death knell for active, progressive, Keynesian, regulated-capitalist government was the generational split that led to the nomination of anti-Vietnam War Sen. George McGovern in 1972, who - spurned by the establishment faction in his own party - lost in a landslide to Nixon.
Scarred by the McGovern campaign, the Democratic Party reorganized itself to exclude anyone who seemed too far left OR too reactionary. The ascent of neoliberalism among both Republicans and anti-labor-union Democrats spelled the end of progressivism as a political force.
In the wake of the Civil Rights Act, Republicans adopted Richard Nixon's racially divisive "Southern Strategy" to win elections, culminating in dog-whistler extraordinaire Ronald Reagan's transformative victory in 1980.
Meanwhile, Rep. Tony Coelho, who chaired the DCCC from 1981-1989 before resigning under a cloud of ethics violations, opened the Democratic Party up to lobbyist donations from industries it had traditionally sought to curb: big finance, defense contractors, and fossil fuels.
A new generation of Democrats - who'd grown up under strong New Deal regulation - took for granted that concentrated financial power simply wasn't a threat to freedom. Neoliberal "Reaganomics" seemed like a practical compromise. theatlantic.com/politics/archi…
Neoliberalism was basically a class-warfare project designed to return political and financial control of America to the elite business class. Privatization, deregulation, fiscal austerity, and free trade replaced the ideas of universal public goods and Keynesian gov't activism.
Republicans broke labor unions (and emphasized individual self-sufficiency over collective action), offshored jobs, slashed budgets for social programs (but not defense contractors!), and prioritized shareholder profits above any sense of corporate responsibility to the public.
And how did they sell this dismantling of the economic foundation of the American middle class? Machismo and racism, basically. America wasn't a bunch of losers who lost Vietnam, they were gonna win the Cold War! With TOUGHNESS! And women's libbers should get back in the kitchen!
But times had changed, and the racism had to get more subtle. Relatively speaking, anyway. Republican dirty-tricks operative Lee Atwater acknowledged as much in a jaw-dropping quote from a 1981 interview with political scientist Alexander Lamis: 
Let's take a moment to unpack that, past the shockingly explicit language. Atwater is saying that if you can't be overtly racist, you have to use specific policies as dog whistles. Racists understand the coded language, but superficially it looks polite to outsiders.
So if Republicans can't make explicitly racist laws, they'll oppress through economic policy. Atwater acknowledges something a LOT of us spent 2016 arguing over: Targeting poor people disproportionately affects black people. And the connection is too abstract to draw condemnation
And it's not like elected Republicans give two shits about poor people in general. So if their subtextually anti-black policy harms other segments of poor people too...well, who really cares? (They do not.)
That is the strategic negation of progressivism: of using the government as a bulwark against abuses of private-sector power, to prevent that power from being directed at socially marginalized groups, and to intervene in the economy as a means of evening things out socially.
It's clear just from this broad historical sketch that progressive economics alone are inadequate protections against bigotry. But if you remove that weapon from your arsenal, you're conceding the GOP's self-admitted policy strategy for systemic (as opposed to social) oppression.
Ideologically speaking, anyone born from the '70s on has been living under the Reagan regime just as surely as the previous generation was living under FDR's, regardless of who was running the government. That era's conventional wisdom endures bc we don't remember anything else.
The "progressive" label was revived in 1991 with the founding of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Three of the six charter members - Bernie Sanders, Maxine Waters, and Peter DeFazio - are still in Congress.
Nancy Pelosi was an early member, but didn't stick around once she was elected Minority Leader. The early CPC was neither large nor organized, and lacked the kind of fundraising or power base that would have given it real leverage over the legislative agenda.
Again, the label "progressive" was consciously chosen for its historical roots in using economic policy and direct governmental action to address inequality. Private-sector for-profit solutions are NOT progressive, because they ensure that rich people receive better outcomes.
The CPC contains most of the, well, actually progressive Democrats in Congress. Membership standards are currently a little nebulous, so you can't necessarily assume ideology, and some newer reps have dual membership in the "business-friendly" New Democrat caucus.
Some CPC members hold progressive positions on certain issues, but embrace private-sector solutions on others (i.e. charter schools). This is not insignificant - this is a direct violation of a core progressive principle, which is why these members are regarded with suspicion.
Most of the CPC's official policy positions (available on their website) are economic policy-based solutions to social problems. They also supported same-sex marriage, a social issue with few economic repercussions (which may help explain progressives' tremendous victory here).
Of the many confusing things about 2016, one was the misuse of "neoliberal" as purely a critique of the Clinton-era Democrats. Misinterpreted context clues gave it a popular meaning not quite what Noam Chomsky and David Harvey meant when discussing Hayek/Friedman/Reagan/Thatcher.
Also baffling, though: social liberals had adopted the term "progressive" to signify empathetic inclusiveness, yet didn't seem to have well-developed class/economic critiques. Arguing that these were incompatible went against the century-old political meaning of "progressive"!
The idea that human social groups will band together more aggressively against perceived outsiders when competing over scarce resources - though widely mocked in some circles - has a name, Realistic Conflict Theory, and roots in social science. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Realistic…
For practical proof of this theory, look no further than the vitriolic tribalism of the 2016 Democratic primary, once the contest was polarized into a high-stakes competition over the scarce resource of actual political power.
Up until now, the CPC has effectively been shut out of institutional power within the Democratic Party and the House of Representatives. House leadership has essentially gone to the best fundraisers, who can then help enforce ideological stances via campaign cash.
Thanks to groundwork laid by Keith Ellison, Raul Grijalva, and current co-chair Mark Pocan, plus co-chair-elect Pramila Jayapal, the CPC has finally begun to make a more aggressive grab for institutional power and policy-making influence.
It helps that they are now the largest caucus in the House, about 40% of the Democratic membership. It also helps that the rebellion against Pelosi's speakership bid is coming from conservative business Dems. Pelosi needs the CPC, giving them the leverage to extract concessions.
It's easy to be cynical about whether the CPC will ever truly be allowed near the levers of actual power. But in the face of climate change, when curbing corporate power will become essential to human survival, it's currently the best hope we have inside the system. Yippee.
Ideology is allegedly bad for impeding compromise, but if you can't place candidates on an ideological spectrum (not just Whose Team they're on), you're going to be pretty disappointed by their governing philosophy once they get elected. Assuming you keep paying attention. FIN
