2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Hillary has spent most of her political career denying she's a liberal [View all]Armstead
(47,803 posts)Your definition is what I would associate with progressivism. Progressives -- as I understand it -- does require government intervention to protect the "level playing field" and the public interest and prevent the wealthy and powerful from getting too wealthy and powerful.
However, it's often used in the opposite faction by people like Clinton. It;s misused, actually, for political cover, to avoid being associated with liberalism. In fact, she is using it as a euphemism for conservatism.
In that video clip, Clinton is correct in the traditional meaning of liberalism and how it has been changed. FDR might have been better described as progressive in the sense of impatient action.
But Clinton's r disparaging of the role of "Big Government" is the problem. It distorts the meaning of progressive, and it also denigrates mid-20th Centiry American Liberalism, as a variant of progressive.