I actually purposely stayed away from the terms progressive, liberal, and conservative sticking instead to left/right. The American take on liberal and conservative really is pretty different from how the many other countries and cultures use those terms.

The two parties do line up well enough with the basic definition of left/right, at least if you squint a bit. We don't actually have a conservative party worth writing home about at all - both Democrats and Republicans are liberal and tend to debate the details.

Case in point, both parties want government to impose laws protecting someone's rights when it comes to abortion, they simply disagree on who's rights need protecting.