Indeed "Leftists" mostly vote Democratic for lack of a more viable alternative, but many do not consider themselves Democrats.

Even really smart and educated people I know are surprised to discover most voters in the US do not have a party affiliation.

You're missing the point that left/right/democrat/republican religions are a divide and conquer strategy to distract from the realization that there is no democracy.

…which is particularly egregious in the context of wars like Vietnam - or even the war in Iraq - which the left was famously outspoken against compared to most Democrats.

Will this "true" left you're talking about criticize democratic party leaders for their wars with the same fervor that they criticize republican party leaders?

When Trump was campaigning for his first presidency everybody was saying he would start a bunch of wars and nuke the whole world. When none of that happened he had to be a traitor since he didn't start any beautiful patriotic wars. Reality is of no consideration to the uneducated and educated masses. War is peace, peace is war.

I will not be mutilated by mortar in a ditch or send my children to die in a trench, no matter who is president. War is a racket, I feel truly sorry for those who suffer and will suffer for following their "leaders".

This isn't true under the current terminology, where Democrats have assigned themselves the title of "the left" with the enthusiastic agreement of Republicans. And while that's a new situation, we're also currently experiencing a vast majority of people who identify as "left" falling under two categories: Obama socialists, who were enthusiastic supporters of candidate Obama and were disappointed in the absolutely traditional run of his presidency, esp. its second term; and Clinton socialists, who went along with the catastrophe of the 2016 Democratic primary because they let themselves be convinced that while they mostly agreed with Sanders, H. Clinton was the only one who could defeat Trump (and they resent the party for this.)

These aren't intellectual positions at all, they're just soap opera stuff. If they've picked up anything about political economy, it was because they were in left-wing spaces during the rise of the Sanders campaign. As far as I can tell, all they took away from it is the slur "tankie," which they think has something to do with Tienanmen Square and should be screamed at anyone anyone to the left of Bill Kristol.

I don't think so. Yes, Democrats (and American progressives in general) don't emphasize socialism as much as the traditional left or some European parties. However, they're generally still sympathetic. Moreover, while American progressives don't worry so much about economic egalitarianism, they very strongly believe that minorities earning less than whites, female earning less than male, etc. is wrong, and are willing to enact things like reparations, affirmative action,and the like to counterbalance that. In the ideal progressive utopia, CEOs would still be paid hundreds of times more than the average worker, but representation of minority race, female, non-straight and trans people among CEOs and other prestigious positions would occur at least as much as their representation in the population, regardless of their ability, and if cis straight white males are represented less than their proportion of the population, that's just gravy, and maybe justified revenge for their dominant position in the past. In fact, wokism is even more egalitarian than Marxism - the latter says from each according to ability, to each according to need, but it was generally expected that the jobs requiring higher ability would be staffed by people of higher ability.

In general, it's obvious that identity politics forms the core of the political class of today's Democratic Party (especially the young), and equally obvious that America is the innovator that other progressive parties follow in this respect. America also has thrown itself into gender politics with particular enthusiasm - gender transitions, even of minors, are a cornerstone of American progressivism today, even as progressive European countries have rolled that back to an extent.

I will concede that Europe leads in the other main aspect of current-day progressivism, the Green movement, although American progressives are avid followers.

I think everyone is confused of what is the left / right.

Traditionally the left has been associated with social policies (stemming from socialism/communism vs capitalism)

And there always was a part of the left which was anti-war, and always was a more "totalitarian" version of the left that felt it was morally justified.

But in every society the meaning of left and right has been fluid.

JFK would be considered a right-wing extremist by todays democrat party (the political powerful left wing, not the average voter)

The missing artifact from the comment is that Republicans and Democrat Left/Rightism as we understand it is a modern thing established (edit: I should say 'consolidated' - because the shift started earlier) under Reagan.

The 'Democrats' were very popular in the South in the 1950's among people who would now refer to themselves as 'conservative'. (Edit: look at the electoral maps for mid century US - Democrats/Republicans were not Left/Right)

Not that Left/Dem are different things today, they are effectively the same, it's just that policy is constrained by the other side, which has a dampening effect on legislation.

The left in america votes blue no matter because idpol and maybe climate, the only nationally palitable Left ideas since Marxism any class are anathema to USA, particularly since fall of USSR.