Why Do (Some) Democrats So Vehemently Deny Their Party Was Neoliberal?

Telling us that Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were not neoliberal seems a denial of the meaning of the word, and the reality of their well-known policy record--to such a degree that anyone espousing this political position can seem like a flat-earther. That being the case, why do people ready to so vehemently promote such a position seem so common now?

The simple answer is that the term "neoliberalism," completely uncontroversial in the past (and still completely uncontroversial among serious students of society, politics and economics now), entered wider, more popular use among a public that had always been to the left of the party, that was becoming more so, and which seemed more assertive of its leftishness. In the process it became a threat, one the party's Establishment could no longer abide. One supposes that they could have opted to apologize for their past, and declare a break with their prior conduct, but they elected to do so. This is not only because "We were wrong" are three of the hardest words in the English or any other language; not only because after their longtime embrace of such ideology and policy they must doubt that they will be believed; but because the party's past is also its present. It has been neoliberal before; and its leaders intend to go on being neoliberal.

When one moves past the oddity and incoherence of the claim to its underlying motives, one gets the impression of an Orwellian attack on the English language, on history, on the memory of the recent past. And perhaps unsurprisingly, while I have run into people making this claim online many, many times, not one of them argued in good faith. In fact, just about every single one of them showed themselves to be a troll.

For that reason I will no longer answer the questions of anyone who takes issue with my characterization of the administrations of Bill Clinton or Barack Obama, or the Establishment Democrats more generally, as neoliberal. If they really are interested in what they have to say, I have already got in my two cents and they can look at that. If they are uninterested in what I have to say (I remember referring one particularly stupid and vehement troll to one of the items, and their snapping that they weren't "going to help [my] self-promotion"), then there is no reason for us to talk--and anyway, all the means for educating themselves on this matter, which would in no way contribute to my "self-promotion" (if that prospect is indeed so disturbing to them) are just a few keywords away. In either case, my days of humoring their demands for "debate" are done, and none too soon because I have too, too many other and better things to do with my time.