To me, it is just short-hand for the economic policy of liberal Democrats, the Nation Magazine, etc. It is also what Paul Samuelson defined in the textbook I read for freshman economics in 1961.
Robert Reich is a leading proponent and this paragraph from a piece he wrote for the Nation is echt-Keynsianism:
"Nations are not passive victims of economic forces. Citizens can, if they so choose, assert that their mutual obligations extend beyond their economic usefulness to one another, and act accordingly. Throughout our history the United States has periodically asserted the public's interest when market outcomes threatened social peace--curbing the power of the great trusts, establishing pure food and drug laws, implementing a progressive federal income tax, imposing a forty-hour workweek, barring child labor, creating a system of social security, expanding public schooling and access to higher education, extending health care to the elderly and so forth. We effected part of this explicitly through laws, regulations and court rulings, and partly through social norms and expectations about how we wanted our people to live and work productively together. In short, this nation developed and refined a strong social compact that gave force to the simple proposition that prosperity could include almost everyone. The puzzle is why we seem to have stopped."
There is no puzzle, of course. What happened is that the ruling class needed to cut labor costs in order to compete with a resurgent West Germany and Japan. This very same ruling class that adopted the New Deal, or else face proletarian revolution, has now shut it down. What Reich and Galbraith, John and James, don't get is that the welfare state did not come about because someone read Keynes, but because there were sit-ins and demonstrations across the country.
Liberal Democratic policy is a thing of the past. Today's Times reports that the "black community" stands behind Clinton in his time of trouble. What they are really talking about is the officialdom grouped around the atrocious Jesse Jackson. When the economic hard times hit the US like they've hit the rest of the world, all sorts of arguments will be made on behalf of the Democratic Party. In times like the 80s, it was easy not to get too upset by this. I even voted for Jackson in the primaries.
Times will be changing. On one hand you will have Wellstone supporters lined up behind a "back to work" program. On the other hand you will have a left-wing labor movement that will have begun to question the legitimacy of capitalism. On the third hand, you will have the fascist movement.
Oil your guns.
Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)