Actually, classical liberals are mostly in line with JFK's platform in 1960, not the current Democratic party platform. The last Democrat whose policies fit with most classical liberal beliefs was Bill Clinton (once he ditched single payer health care plans early in his presidency).
I live in Indiana at the time and voted for Evan Bayh for governor, a Democrat in one of the most Republican states in the country. But then the Democratic party abandoned classical liberalism for progressive liberalism.
Classical liberalism believes the most important role government plays other then that of protecting its citizens from threats both within and externally is to create an environment where every individual has the personal freedom to pursue happiness. Recognizing such a system does not work for the disabled, classical liberals do support a social safety net for those that can't help themselves. Lastly, in order to pursue happiness, institutional racism of any kind including affirmative action has no place in society. Twisting MLK's vision slightly, every human should be judged on their character and not the color of their skin, their religion, ethnicity, gender, etc. But such a society will produce winners and losers, and that is okay, as long as everyone had a chance.
Progressive liberalism starts with a vision... in the case of the Democratic party, that vision is one where all identity groups have an equitable distribution of income and wealth and power and enjoys a defined standard of living. Government laws are passed to force that to happen even if they are discriminatory. One group has fewer doctors, force the numbers through affirmative action. One group is poorer, force the results through taxes and entitlements.
The Democratic party platform has no faith in markets to produce the greatest level of prosperity and the lowest level of poverty even if it also produces great income and wealth disparity.
The problem is when government tries to manage something as complex as an advanced economy it simply screws up and cronyism and corruption soon emerges as the dominant characteristic of such a government.
Lastly, progressive liberalism focuses on what it things is a more fair way to distribute goods and services across society. In doing so, progressive liberals ignore the reasons why goods and services get produced in the first place... people make stuff, so they can take the money they get from making stuff to buy stuff. Take the money away and they tend not to make stuff.
Donald Trump was conservative populist. He felt people wanted their government to grow jobs, increase wages, and grow the overall economy. He accomplished those three goals until the pandemic shot a hole in the global economies when they shutdown. Trump felt the more people "earned their own money" the more freedom they had to pursue happiness. Controlling illegal immigration and global outsourcing had put pressure on workers' wages and so he tried to limit those activities by securing the border and pursuing "fair trade" over "free trade".
Prior to the pandemic low income workers so the greatest real wage gains in decades, unemployment got down to the lowest level in 70 years, and the economy grew though not as fast as he promised as we began to run out of workers to make stuff. The labor force participation rate began to improve the first time in a decade and housing affordability increased. Poverty levels went down. Trump has plenty of character flaws, but his policies worked better for most Americans than Biden's policies are today or Obama's policies... Bill Clinton, who also had character flaws, is probably the only President whose policies produced more individual prosperity than Trump's did before Covid hit.
