Factions in the Democratic Party (United States) in the context of "Clintonism"

New Democrats, also known as centrist Democrats, Clinton Democrats, or moderate Democrats, are a centrist ideological faction within the Democratic Party in the United States. As the Third Way faction of the party, they are seen as culturally liberal on social issues while being moderate or fiscally conservative on economic issues. New Democrats dominated the party from the late 1980s through the early-2010s, and continue to be a large coalition in the modern Democratic Party.

With the rise of progressivism in 2016 and 2020 amidst the presidential campaigns of Bernie Sanders, and that of the right-wing populism of Donald Trump, New Democrats began to change and update their ideological positions. Debates over tax cuts on capital gains have been reconfigured to removing caps on state and local tax deduction (SALT).

The American Left refers to the groups or ideas on the left of the political spectrum in the United States. It is occasionally used as a shorthand for groups aligned with the Democratic Party. At other times, it refers to groups that have sought egalitarian changes in the economic, political, and cultural institutions of the United States. Various subgroups with a national scope are active. Liberals and progressives believe that equality can be accommodated into existing capitalist structures, but they differ in their criticism of capitalism and on the extent of reform and the welfare state. Anarchists, communists, and socialists with international imperatives are also present within this macro-movement. Many communes and egalitarian communities have existed in the United States as a sub-category of the broader intentional community movement, some of which were based on utopian socialist ideals. The left has been involved in both the Democratic and Republican parties at different times, having originated in the Democratic-Republican Party as opposed to the Federalist Party.

Although left-wing politics came to the United States in the 19th century, there are currently no major left-wing political parties in the country. Despite existing left-wing factions within the Democratic Party, as well as minor third parties such as the Green Party, Communist Party USA, Party for Socialism and Liberation, American Communist Party, Workers World Party, Socialist Party, and American Solidarity Party (a Christian democratic party leaning left on economics), there have been few representatives of left-leaning third parties in Congress. Academic scholars have long studied the reasons why no viable socialist parties have emerged in the United States. Some writers ascribe this to the failures of socialist organization and leadership, some to the incompatibility of socialism with American values, and others to the limitations imposed by the United States Constitution. Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky were particularly concerned because it challenged orthodox Marxist beliefs that the most advanced industrial country would provide a model for the future of less developed nations. If socialism represented the future, then it should be strongest in the United States. While branches of the Working Men's Party were founded in the 1820s and 1830s in the United States, they advocated land reform, universal education and improved working conditions in the form of labor rights, not collective ownership, disappearing after their goals were taken up by Jacksonian democracy. Samuel Gompers, the leader of the American Federation of Labor, thought that workers must rely on themselves because any rights provided by government could be revoked.