It depends on what you mean by "liberal" and "progressive" and "Democratic." Richard Hofstadter was a great liberal historian of the previous generation.
"The American Political Tradition is a 1948 book by Richard Hofstadter, an account on the ideology of previous U.S. presidents and other political figures. The full title is The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It.

Hofstadter's introduction proposes that the major political traditions in the United States, despite contentious battles, have all "...shared a belief in the rights of property, the philosophy of economic individualism, the value of competition... [T]hey have accepted the economic virtues of a capitalist culture as necessary qualities of man."
While many accounts have made political conflict central,the author proposes that a common ideology of "self-help, free enterprise, competition, and beneficent cupidity" has guided the Republic since its inception. Through analyses of the ruling class in the U.S., Hofstadter argues that this consensus is the hallmark of political life in the U.S." -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ame...

More to the point, Ayn Rand said that she admired the liberals of her time because they had an intellectual approach to politics, framing solutions to problems that they identified from an ideological perspective. She disagreed with their conclusions, but admired their method. She disparaged "conservatives" as me-too traditionalists, who, of necessity had no alternative to the liberal agenda, only dragging their heels to slow it down.

In our time, those labels mean something else. It may be that Ayn Rand's view of capitalism and individualism has come to be the intellectual foundation of the American Right, while the so-called "progressives" are all over the map with no clear ideology of their own - and often denouncing "ideology" of any kind as white male exceptionalism.

I turned on a Liberal radio station yesterday to hear what was new in the world of the Left. You can hear everything from Dr. King's eloquent words on African Americans' individual rights to Marxist sympathizers' expletive-laden rants on the white man's cruel nature. Then listeners were asked for a donation. The new left lacks not just principle, but method. It is driven by the emotionalism inherent in religion. Liberal has got more characteristics of a religion than it does a grounded philosophical system.

The power of society must always be limited by the basic, inalienable rights of the individual.
The right of liberty means man's right to individual action, individual choice, individual initiative and individual property. Without the right to private property no independent action is possible.
The right to the pursuit of happiness means man's right to live for himself, to choose what constitutes his own, private, personal happiness and to work for its achievement. Each individual is the sole and final judge in this choice. A man's happiness cannot be prescribed to him by another man or by any number of other men.
These rights are the unconditional, personal, private, individual possession of every man, granted to him by the fact of his birth and requiring no other sanction. Such was the conception of the founders of our country, who placed individual rights above any and all collective claims. Society can only be a traffic policeman in the intercourse of men with one another.

http://fare.tunes.org/liberty/library...