1. The mainstream of American politics has throughout its entire history, and certainly its history since the Depression-World War II era, not really included a "left" (in the sense of people who unabashedly espouse the Enlightenment's position that we can use reason to understand society down to its roots and radically alter its structure for the better, that such change is not just possible but desirable and necessary, etc., the way that socialists do). Instead it has just a right and a "center."
2. The right and center are both conservative (in the sense of regarding reason and reason-driven social change of that nature as a false hope that is destructive when people act upon it, inclining them to instead accept what exists in line with the beliefs of the "Counter-Enlightenment," with this the grounds for that critical tenet of latterday conservatism, anti-Communism). However, the right and center may be said to represent different elements in the conservative and anti-Communist traditions. The right emphasizes loyalty to tradition. (It is embodied in Barry Goldwater saying that "We must, and we shall, return to proven ways . . . because they are true.") The center espouses the more pragmatic, compromising, sometimes "Everything must change for everything to remain the same" side of conservatism (such that, as it opposed Communism, it was prepared to make social concessions, as seen in the New Deal, rather than simply insist on the sanctity of "free markets").
3. The American right and center have together shifted rightward along the modern political spectrum since that mid-twentieth century period (as seen in the fact that neoliberalism and neoconservatism have both become the country's political default mode).
4. The main disagreement between right and center today is in the cultural sphere--and underlines the reality of a clash of differing conservatisms. (Where the older civil rights tradition was rationalistic and concerned with objective fairness, universalist, and hopeful of progress--and so classically left-leaning--the subjectivist, particularist, pessimistic outlook of identity, or "status," politics is in its premises, working, sound and feel plain old rightist nationalism, and people mainly confused about the difference because of 1. Being more used to seeing such nationalism on the part of dominant groups and not knowing what to make of it when it comes from those who are dominated, and 2. The residues of the old civil rights movement.)
If what this leaves us with is a conservative right and center, then why do we hear of the "left" constantly? Beyond the sloppiness with political terminology to which even "experts" seem to think themselves entitled the simple answer is that there is really a right in America, and the tendency to think in terms of every issue as having no more than exactly "two sides" means that what is not right is "left." This is reinforced by the tendency of the right to see those as left of itself as too close to the left for comfort; the fact that accusing them of being far more left than they are has been a longstanding political habit, the easier to keep up in an age in which what is "right" keeps moving rightward; and the fact that not having had to really contend with a left at home leaves them that much less likely to take a nuanced view. Moreover, this suits the center just fine--often happy as it is to present itself as more leftward than it really is, and not too distressed at a delineation of the political spectrum that treats the left (centrism's primary target from the start) as effectively nonexistent, left on the ash heap of history as the conversation was redefined.
But all this seems to me to do much more harm than good to our understanding of politics--the drivers behind and limitations of various tendencies, and what it all means as very possibly the spectrum shifts yet again. After all, if in the main it has been the right that has grabbed headlines and won elections, the word "socialist" has entered the American mainstream discourse as something other than a hyperbolic epithet, while the labor movement is stirring in a way that neoliberals had hoped to never see again.
Confusing a bunch of conservative centrists with actual leftists helps no one's understanding of such matters, however much it suits the convenience of political hacks without respect for fact, truth, history or language.
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