Are you old enough to remember real Dem's?

[Go Vols]

I am,and life was good.

In the late 1970s, as large corporations turned into transnational giants, they pumped huge amounts of cash into the political system. This largesse lured, first, the Republican Party, in the 80s, followed by the Democratic Party in the ‘90s, and precipitated a rightward political shift as both parties rewrote their policies to compete for the same corporate contributions.

Before this, from 1932-1976, the Democratic Party as a whole was far more progressive. The issues and approaches advocated today by Bernie Sanders were considered mainstream Democratic ideas by Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, and even many moderate Republicans. It was common to support strict financial regulation, liberal immigration, social services for the poor, and progressive tax policies.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tony-brasunas/there-is-a-moderate-republican-in-this-race_b_9704194.html

110 votes, 1 pass | Time left: Unlimited
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[Recursion]

1. Bullshit nostalgia for an economy built for white males only

This is so tired at this point

[Go Vols]

2. Guess you didn't read the OP

[Recursion]

5. I did. Looks like you didn't think when you quoted it.

Pre 1976 D party more progressive? You're embarrassing yourself.

[Go Vols]

22. Think again

[MADem]

31. It's funny as hell!

But what's best is people blaming Clinton for shit while he was still in law school! LOL!

[Go Vols]

37. missed that part,could you quote it?

[MADem]

57. Look downthread--your contributors do not know their American history. nt

[Jim Lane]

102. Yes, the pre-1976 Democratic Party was indeed progressive.

That was the party that got through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act, if you want to focus on race-related issues.

Then, on other issues, there was the nuclear test ban treaty, Medicare, and federal aid to education.

Those are from the Kennedy-Johnson era. The time covered by the OP also includes the New Deal and I won't even bother trying to list all the progressive accomplishments of FDR. His weakest area was certainly race, because he largely didn't try to take on the Southern Democrats who were segregationists, but he did establish the Fair Employment Practice Committee to cover federal employment. Then came Truman, also a Democrat, who desegregated the armed forces.

The 1990s certainly saw economic gains. Still, if you want to assess overall progressivism, you'll have to take the bitter with the sweet. That Democratic President put his pen to welfare "reform", NAFTA, DOMA, and Gramm–Leach–Bliley.

[whathehell]

162. Thanks for that long list of progressive legislation

It's amazing how ignorant of history some here are...A poster down thread just said

he "certainly wouldn't have been a democrat then"....Guess he wouldn't have favored all those things.

[Sparkly]

183. The OP is about the party going back to 1932.

Before Johnson, the Democratic party had plenty of racists in its ranks especially the south (aka "Dixiecrats&quot .

Let's also not imagine there weren't scandals, affairs, and vote suppression going on. Democrats did not manage to pass the ERA, and LGBT issues were not on anybody's radar. Speaking of radar, you won't see a lot of pacifists on either side. We had a draft for decades.

Let's just not romanticize the past imagining everything has gone backward.

[Jim Lane]

185. Yes, and I mentioned the racial issues under FDR.

You write, "Let's also not imagine there weren't scandals, affairs, and vote suppression going on." I completely agree, but I add that I don't see anyone actually imagining that, so it's not an error that really needs to be confronted.

It's not romanticizing the past to say that Social Security and the Civil Rights Act were major progressive advances, even if they didn't cure every social ill.

[Recursion]

199. And half of the Democratic party opposed the Civil Rights Act as opposed to 1/3rd of the GOP

It was the fallout of that vote, and the GOP's later cynical manipulation of it, that caused the exodus of that half of the Democratic party -- the half of the party whose leaving people here are lamenting as the party becoming "less progressive".

I'm fucking sick of it. It's gaslighting. I don't want that old party back. It was a much worse party.

[Sparkly]

204. I'm with you.

The "nostalgia" for good old days that never were is a favorite American delusion, it seems.

[Jim Lane]

208. Yes, a big change that's occurred since World War II is the reversal of the parties' roles on race.

In #102 I pointed out that FDR was responsible for huge progressive accomplishments but that he nevertheless continued to accommodate the Southern segregationists, who at that time were Democrats.

The segregationist exodus that you ascribe to Johnson actually began earlier, in 1948, with the Dixiecrat walkout and Thurmond's presidential race. In 1960, after JFK supported civil rights, Nixon became the first Republican presidential candidate to get electoral votes in the South while losing nationwide. Certainly, though, LBJ's continuation and successful prosecution of JFK's policies accelerated the trend.

But that bit of history doesn't refute the OP. The thesis of the OP is that the Democratic Party was more progressive in the 1932-1976 period, which encompasses the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act as well as Medicare (an enormous progressive achievement that most Republicans opposed). The OP further argues that, since the 1990s, there's been a rightward shift in the Democratic Party. Consider that Barack Obama himself said that, a few decades ago, his policies would have placed him as a moderate Republican. He's not a Republican today because, as per the OP, there's also been a rightward shift (well, rightward lurch, more like) in the Republican Party.

As I look at the Democrats in Congress today, I don't see out-and-out white supremacists in the Strom Thurmond mold. I also, however, don't see many individuals, let alone a party leadership, willing to press for significant breakthroughs of the kind we achieved under the four Democratic Presidents from Roosevelt through Johnson.

So, I agree with you, I don't want Strom Thurmond back -- but I'd love to have Hubert Humphrey or any of the Kennedy brothers back.

[Recursion]

209. You're imagining a world where Kennedy could win nationally without white southerners.

He couldn't. MS and AL effectively protest-voted themselves out of the contest, but he swept the rest of the deep south and he needed to. That was the old coalition, that was how those particular policy victories we had were made and I absolutely refuse to go back to it. I'm much, much happier with our new coalition and the new policy victories we have made with it.

[whathehell]

127. No, you are embarrassing yourself..It's obvious you weren't around then.

The Democratic party of the Sixties got behind the Civil Rights Movement with Democratic Presidents Kennedy and Johnson

initiating The Voting Rights Act and numerous other reforms.

In addition, the tax rate on the Wealthiest Americans was at SEVENTY Percent

with loopholes closed. Try to keep up.

[reformist2]

195. Wow, you need to learn history. The Dems used to be way more liberal, on so many issues.

Hillary's positions are very much like a moderate Republican from the 1970s.

[Recursion]

196. And...

The Dems used to be way more liberal, on so many issues.

And way way way less liberal on many issues, particularly the ones I care most about.

What the hell is so hard to understand about this?

[wildeyed]

198. I want to frame this post and hang it on the wall.

Maybe turn it into a cross stitch pattern...

I dunno why they can't grasp this concept. It is not hard.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

6. I guess LBJ's Great Society plan was just a vast right-wing conspiracy theory.

[Recursion]

15. It certainly didn't raise black incomes like the 1990s did

Was it a conspiracy? Probably not. I'm sure LBJ meant well.

[merrily]

35. Is it at all possible that Great Society policies bore fruit a generation or two later?

But, you know when people speak of traditional Democrats, they are not asking for return to discrimination.

[Recursion]

43. Yes, they are: that's what traditional Democrats were

If you want a non-racist mid-20th-century-style populist, that's something new, not traditional. The racism was not incidental; it was integral.

The economic model doesn't even work without depressing minority and female wages. That's why white male wages started dropping in the 1970s, long before "trade" or any of the other bogeymen: white males finally had to compete.

[merrily]

54. No, they are not, except in someone's spin. What they want are Democrats who were not

in thrall to lobbyists and things like that. You are being way too literal--and that comes from someone often criticized for being too literal. I am not sure if you are doing that because that is how your mind works (as does mine) or that is what your political agenda demands. Either way, no one is calling for women to make 70 cents on the dollar again, or for unions to exclude women and minorities again. It might be nice to stop picking that scab and try to at least accept people's word when they tell you that's not what they mean.

Or not.

I'm very laissez faire about posters today.

[Recursion]

63. I'm being literal to help point out *why* the "take the party back" rhetoric

has not carried the day nationally, particularly with many voters of color. It seems genuinely mystifying to some so I thought I would make the connection that people seem to be missing explicit.

[merrily]

71. Are you? Because the conversation seldom seems to move past berating people about

wanting to return to the days when only white men had food and on to the point that your Reply 63 claims you're actually trying to make. And, btw, your view of why traditional Democrats don't carry the day nationally was not handed down on stone tablets. There could be a lot more to it. You could even be wrong about why it doesn't carry the day.

In any event, few things shut down a discussion among Democrats faster than telling them they're yearning for racial and gender discrimination. On top of that, you seem annoyed and impatient, also not conducive to discussion.

As a woman who has little use for New Democrats, I can assure you, I am not longing to get paid 65 or 70 cents on the dollar or be kept out of state and federal legislatures and other places that were, as a practical matter, good old boys' clubs back in the day. That is not any part of my comparing New Democrats unfavorably to traditional Democrats.

[okasha]

69. The "traditional" Democratic Party

was corrupt, racist and not infrequently violent. In S. Texas, we had "patrón democracy," the boot-and-Stetson equivalent of Boss Daly.

The people who rhapsodise over Johnson while clutching their pearls over Clinton's IWR vote either forget or ignore LBJ's Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and his financially intimate relationship with Kellog Brown Root, one of the major defense contractors of the Vietnam War.

[MADem]

78. Brown and Root, the Halliburton of its day! They were all over hell.

In fact, when they teamed up with Kellogg, they became, for a time, a Halliburton subsidiary!


Strange bedfellows...

[okasha]

81. Then there's Box 13.

I was at the funeral of the man who stole it for LBJ. I'll tell that story one day, because it was funny as hell. 

[MADem]

82. The Alan Ladd Box 13?

That sounds like an interesting story....!!!

Those are on the internet now...

http://www.otr.net/?p=bx13

[Go Vols]

84. Fuck Brown and Root,

but we have evolved?

[MADem]

99. Please, be my guest. No one here is in love w/KBR. nt

[Armstead]

148. Just in thrall to their contemporary equivalents in all fields

We loves those huge corrupt banks and firms like Goldman Sachs and otehr abusive monopolistic corporations, such as Comcast and Monsanto

[MADem]

167. Well that comment was apropos of absolutely nothing.

"We loves" them, do YOU?

Because you're not talking about me with that """folksy"""" vernacular. smDh!!! Not even subtle!

Armstead
148. Just in thrall to their contemporary equivalents in all fields
View profile
We loves those huge corrupt banks and firms like Goldman Sachs and otehr abusive monopolistic corporations, such as Comcast and Monsanto

[bettyellen]

211. "We loves them huge corrupt banks"- WTF are you imitating with that vernacular?

What the fuck?

[okasha]

203. The ballot box from Precinct 13 in Jim Wells Co., Texas.

LBJ was running for the Senate against Gov. Coke Stevenson in 1948, and they were both energetically cheating. George Parr, aka "The Duke of Duval(Co.)" managed to persuade a few thousand deceased, missing and outright fictional voters to cast their ballots for Johnson. After several days of see-sawing results, 87 as-yet-untabulated Johnson ballots were discovered in Box 13, just enough to give him the edge over Stevenson and earn his nickname of "Landslide Lyndon." The box, its ballots and tally sheet subsequntly disappeared and have never been found.

The gentleman whose funeral I attended was the one who actually took the box. There is still speculation whether he burned it, tossed it in the Rio Grande, or kept it. His funeral was a supreme soap opera episode involving the Bishop who presided, his wife, his mistress, and two extremely wealthy S. Texas oil and ranching families.

I wouldn't have missed it for the world!

[MADem]

207. LOL! NOW I remember that story, just did not realize the box NUMBER!!!

Ha ha ha--the mystery of that box would have been a great plot line for the radio show, Box 13!

That must have been one helluva funeral, too!!!!

Was that the "pig fxxker" race? "Of course it ain't true--I jus' want to make the SOB deny it...!" -- that might have been an earlier House race, now that I think of it...

LBJ certainly was ... "colorful" -- I think they used to call it!

Bryan Cranston has brought his LBJ stage portrayal to film and HBO will be showing it quite soon--can't wait to see what he does with such a meaty role!

[That Guy 888]

101. The 1990'a, when high-wage manufacturing jobs left what would become the rust belt...

to chase tax abatements all across the south. Here in San Antonio, we have an AT&T building, it had great paying(for San Antonio) union jobs. Once the tax abatement ran out, so did they.

[azurnoir]

103. your comment seems to imply that the 1990's raised only Black incomes-all incomes were raised

infact you'll find that pattern follows for all ethnic groups through the decades

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

106. But black incomes stayed up, unlike poor whites' incomes

And the relative increase for black workers was much, much larger than for white workers.

[azurnoir]

113. No they did not as a nation we rise and fall together

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

114. Except that's just not factually true

White incomes are stagnant over the past 40 years and non-white incomes are significantly higher.

[azurnoir]

115. No it is not the only non-white income that is higher is Asian and as a group they are the highest i

income level with Blacks being the lowest, unless of course you'd have us believe Blacks benefited from the Bush years that is?

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

117. Black workers did well in the Clinton years

And didn't lose nearly as much income in the W years as white workers.



Which, again, gets to my point that the stagnant incomes narrative is a dog whistle.

[azurnoir]

118. why a chart showing only Black income let's see one that compares it white, Hispanic and Asian

incomes, the charts in the link I've posted are interactive therefore not postable as a graphic ut they are quite informative

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

119. I've in fact done that, and here they are

Poorest black quintile:



Next-poorest black quintile:



Poorest white quintile:



Now, superimpose the two poorest black and white quintiles:



And the poorest three:



Starting in the 1990s, black incomes roughly "caught up" with the white quintile "below" them.

This, to me, explains the current politics of white resentment, which has found expression on both the right and left this cycle.

[azurnoir]

121. well while I admire the word or powerpoint? work there of those charts albeit they are difficult to

read, and there fore they do not show much and it could seem that the highest Black incomes caught up to the lowest white -is that what your cheering ? The most that can be boasted is that Black income levels closed the gap a smidgen

here are the interactive ones yet again which show income levels by year

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

122. Matlab

The most that can be boasted is that Black income levels closed the gap a smidgen


You're missing the point (and you can stop posting the EPI link; I assure you I've read it).

Black working-class incomes are higher today than they were in 1971 or 1991.

White working-class incomes today are about where they were in 1971 or 1991.

This shouldn't be that hard to grasp.

[azurnoir]

124. both are slightly higher today

[Recursion]

128. Black incomes today are nearly double what they were in 1991

Seriously: this attempt at gaslighting is absurd.

[azurnoir]

130. In 1991 Blkack median income was $31, 369 per year in 2013 it was $34,598 per year

so unless you'd have believe that Black income has jumped $15,000 to $20,000 per year in the last 2-3 years that is simply not true

http://www.epi.org/blog/real-median-household-incomes-racial-groups/

[Recursion]

131. I'm talking about the poorest two quintiles

And I said so.

[1StrongBlackMan]

174. Do you think that data point was ignored and a different point used ...

was a benign coincidence ... Or, deliberate given the (proportional) composition of the data sets?

[1StrongBlackMan]

175. I think your what you posted, here ...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/118744587 and, here: http://www.democraticunderground.com/118750015

Can be revisited.

[Recursion]

179. I'm challenging a narrative in which people have cast themselves as the aggrieved heros

That never goes well...

[1StrongBlackMan]

182. Aggrieved Heros that they have; but for, an accident of birth, done nothing to earn.

[JRLeft]

145. Clinton's policies are the reason black incomes declined.

[Recursion]

147. They rose

Why are you lying about something so easy to check?

[JRLeft]

150. They declined due to prison and offshoring.

I'm black by the way.

[Recursion]

151. Nope. Black incomes at all quintiles are up from 1991

Significantly, in fact.

I posted the BLS data in this thread.

[JRLeft]

155. Black people are struggling maybe in your bubble life is good.

[1StrongBlackMan]

176. JRLeft ... you are better than that ...

Black people are struggling maybe in your bubble life is good.

Recursion isn't saying that Black folks have (had) arrived during the Clinton years; but rather, he has provided empirical evidence that Black folks (collectively), saw the steepest increase in incomes since the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.

[JRLeft]

187. Wages rose due to the bubble economy, it was a facade.

The economic collapse was a combination of Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush policies. Bill Clinton happened to get elected during the tech boom. He benefitted from that.

[1StrongBlackMan]

189. Okay.

[Recursion]

210. Black wages *didn't* collapse after the 1990s though. That's my point.

Black wages rose and stayed up. Unlike white wages, which rose and then fell, viz:









The only dataset there where the "bubble" narrative applies is the white lowest quintile -- and, incidentally, they're still making more than the bottom two black quintiles. But they're the ones who are pissed off...

[floriduck]

178. Or fill the prisons with your friends and neighbors.

[MADem]

59. Good grief, get your decades right--that was the SIXTIES.

smh.

You really do need a 20th Century History class. Your facts are, quite simply, out of order.

WOEFULLY.

[Jim Lane]

105. Good grief, get your reading comprehension right -- that's within the OP.

You belligerently and repeatedly assert that this thread must be strictly about the seventies. You accompany these posts with insults to the intelligence of anyone who dares to disagree with you.

Allow me to acquaint you with the facts you are unable or unwilling to acknowledge.

The OP (usually taken as the starting point for determining what a thread is about) drew a contrast: How things were after the rise in corporate power, a process that began "{I}n the late 1970s," versus how they had been "{b}efore this, from 1932-1976...." That means you can't confine your attention to the seventies just because that limitation happens to suit your polemical purposes.

On the thesis of the OP, the Carter administration was something of an in-between situation. The OP marks the Democratic Party's more progressive era as ending in 1976. The parties' rightward shift is seen as taking full effect in the 1980s (Republicans) and 1990s (Democrats). If you want to refute that contention, you'll have to defend the Democratic Party of the 1990s as being more progressive than that of 1932-76.

Recursion tried to support that point of view with some actual analysis in #15, by citing changes in black incomes. I'm not persuaded, based on the overall differences between the two eras that I noted in #102, but Recursion was at least trying to have a reasonable conversation instead of relying on invective and intimidation.

[MADem]

112. No--the whole thesis was the "OLD DEM'S" (sic) one.

These were the good old days, and hasn't everything sucked since then.

When the foundation of the argument is totally hosed, everything that comes from it isn't worth a tinker's damn.

Anyone who thought that corporate power didn't influence political life in the happy-happy seventies (never mind much, MUCH earlier) is pipe dreaming. That influence goes back to WW1 and earlier. Do you seriously think Brown and Root were engaged in civic good works, and they only influenced the White House during the Vietnam War because they were nice guys? And Bebe Rebozo? He was just a friendly old guy with a nice beach house?

The difference between then and now? We've got the internet, and it's easier to gripe about it. We've also got more laws to flout about corporate influence--the cash comes through in other ways (no work jobs for relatives, stock tips, etc.) and not in manila envelopes.

[Recursion]

133. How about McNamara going from Ford to SecDef (nt?)

[Jim Lane]

180. You're going way beyond the point of the OP.

You and MADem are now arguing against the propositions that American politics in general and the Democratic Party in particular were completely free of corporate influence before 1976, and that the Democratic Party was (from the point of view of progressives in 2016) absolutely perfect, with no counterexamples to be found.

Neither the OP nor anyone else has made those arguments.

What the OP actually said was:

Before this, from 1932-1976, the Democratic Party as a whole was far more progressive.

Note that "as a whole" refers to its overall character, not to a claim that CEOs never became Cabinet officers. Note further that "more progressive" means -- well, I don't know how to paraphrase to make it simpler. If progressives back then were getting 30% of what they wanted and are now getting 10% (or substitute your own numbers to taste), then it was more progressive then, even if it largely fell short of the ideal.

As for corporate influence, of course it's always existed. On this point, the thesis of the OP is that, beginning in the 1970s, big corporations, partly as a result of becoming bigger, began putting more money into the political system, and that this had the results they desired, namely that both major parties became greater recipients of corporate cash and therefore tended toward more corporate-friendly policies. Here you'll see the words "more" and "greater" which mean that the subject is a change, not any allegation of perfection of the Good Olde Days or of total depravity we now endure.

[Recursion]

186. And I think we're pretty effectively arguing it was *not* more progressive back then

And that the casting of it as "more progressive" is a kind of cherry-picking, wishful-thinking, nostalgic bullshit.

[Jim Lane]

193. I agree with you that the issue is cherry-picking.

Let's take the example of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It outlawed many forms of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. One of the gaps was plugged by the Age Discrimination in Employment Act (1967), also passed by a Democratic Congress and signed by a Democratic President.

As against that, it did nothing about LGBT rights. Back then, that whole issue wasn't on the radar of most Democratic Party leaders (or of most progressives, or of most Americans). One effect of the subsequent growth of the gay rights movement has been that the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) has at least been proposed in Congress. This Congress, however, is not very progressive by comparison (that's the OP's point). ENDA has not been enacted and is not widely considered to have good prospects in the near future.

IMO, the Civil Rights Act (coupled with the ADEA) constituted major progressive legislation. It wasn't perfect, which is why we need ENDA, but it accomplished an awful lot.

You haven't addressed the Civil Rights Act. I'm not clear whether you think that it constitutes "cherry-picking" to point to the outlawing of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex, or national origin. My view is the opposite: It's cherry-picking to seize on imperfections as a basis for denying that the Civil Rights Act was indeed progressive.

[1StrongBlackMan]

10. It is tiring, isn't it?

[Recursion]

50. And the willfull deafness that's required to not hear it

is just astounding.

[Chasstev365]

14. OMG! Does EVERYTHING have to have a sexist bent?

YOU ARE THE EMBARRSSMENT!!

[Viva_La_Revolution]

25. sexist and racist

[MADem]

26. The economy was so fucked up in the seventies. Anyone who thought it was great is blowing smoke.

WHIP INFLATION NOW!

Whip Inflation Now (WIN) was an attempt to spur a grassroots movement to combat inflation, by encouraging personal savings and disciplined spending habits in combination with public measures, urged by U.S. President Gerald Ford. People who supported the mandatory and voluntary measures were encouraged to wear "WIN" buttons,[1] perhaps in hope of evoking in peacetime the kind of solidarity and voluntarism symbolized by the V-campaign during World War II.
The campaign began in earnest with the establishment by the 93rd Congress, of the National Commission on Inflation, which Ford closed with an address to the American people, asking them to send him a list of ten inflation-reducing ideas.[2] Ten days later, Ford declared inflation "public enemy number one" before Congress on October 8, 1974, in a speech entitled "Whip Inflation Now", announcing a series of proposals for public and private steps intended to directly affect supply and demand, in order to bring inflation under control. "WIN" buttons immediately became objects of ridicule; skeptics wore the buttons upside down, explaining that "NIM" stood for "No Immediate Miracles," or "Nonstop Inflation Merry-go-round," or "Need Immediate Money."

I have to laugh at some of the crap we're seeing here about the "good old days."

Nixon "I am not a crook" resigned, Ford tried and failed to whip that inflation now, Jimmy Carter came in for one term and got bigfooted out of his gig, giving us Ronnie Raygun--yeah, those were swell days!

[Scootaloo]

28. Thank god that dark age was swept aside by the mighty hand of Ronald Reagan, amirite?

[MADem]

36. Republicans owned the White House for most of the seventies. Carter got 4 years out of ten. nt

[Scootaloo]

48. Cool. We're talking about Democrats, though.

[MADem]

74. Yes, we are--and once they finally shoved Nixon off the political map, they accommodated Ford,

because he was "reasonable."

When Carter came in, there was a schism in the party--the northern cadre hated him because he was a southerner, and Ted Kennedy went out of his way to fuck him at every turn. He was VIRULENT about it, too. TK was my Senator, but I thought his behavior was disgraceful during that timeframe. He had serious addiction issues back then which might have influenced his judgment at the time.

So ... if we're talking about Democrats, let's tell the truth--the party was fractured in the seventies, Ted Kennedy enabled the election of Reagan by primarying Carter, and those "real Dems" were all over the doggone map, from deeply, DEEPLY conservative to somewhat liberal.

This "happy families" fiction of a united, "progressive" (feh-that word has lost its meaning) party in the seventies is what I find laughable. The Democratic Party in the seventies was divided and in deep disarray. And if this fiction of the seventies as a wonderful era (it wasn't) is going to be perpetuated, we need to admit that we weren't making policy back then for most of that era.

The complete cluster in 72 with the Wipe The Floor DEFEAT of George McGovern showed us just how well we Dems were resonating at the start of the decade at the national level:



Yeah, the American people were really feeling us--not. It wasn't US, of course, it was THEM. They chose sweaty, lying, Tricky Dick Nixon over us. We didn't make the sale because we didn't look, we didn't see, we didn't understand the voting public.

We did not connect.

[Dem2]

49. So true.

[JackRiddler]

73. For whom is the economy now built, pray tell?

[1StrongBlackMan]

107. Very wealthy white males.

[JackRiddler]

120. Yes exactly.

Although they are on a global level and there's been a small but not inisignicant diversification of the topmost wealthy group - in principle more than in reality.

But the economy more than ever is built for the very wealthy and their immediate operational servants in the transnational corporations and political realms. With old privileges not yet broken down at lower class levels, but no longer meaning strong household incomes down here, and with inequality worse and poverty more peristent than ever (whatever the ostensible macroeconomic measures say). And no fully rational direction in the face of the system's self-generated ecological apocalypse.

So the neoliberal age (if we may call it that) shouldn't be touted as an improvement. Do we agree on that much?

[Recursion]

123. White incomes today are about the same as 1970, at least for the bottom 50%

Black incomes today are roughly double what they were in 1970, at least for the bottom 50%.

Saying you want to go back to the pre-1970s politics is going to be a hard sell, for that one reason if nothing else.

[JackRiddler]

136. "Pre-1970 politics" is a vague term.

It can mean the establishment of Medicare and stronger unions (without racial exclusion this time), or it can mean Jim Crow, or a war in Vietnam. It can also mean the era before mass incarceration was treated as a solution to social problems, so that the prison population is now eight times bigger and millions are disenfranchised or have had their lives destroyed thanks to mostly bullshit "war on drugs" felony convictions.

I don't feel like you are speaking to my post, however.

[1StrongBlackMan]

141. Funny ... I sense you are talking around Recursion's post. ...

Last edited Thu May 19, 2016, 01:57 PM - Edit history (1)

You are, both, attempting to define the "good ole days" ("Pre-1970 politics) by what it wasn't, e.g., the establishment of Medicare and stronger unions (without racial exclusion this time), AND by pointing to what has been the grievance of the disenfranchised; but, largely ignored by those pining for the "good ole days.

What gives?

[Recursion]

149. You know "what gives"

But either of us would be hidden for saying it...

[1StrongBlackMan]

156. No doubt! ...

It's almost as if we should be able to pick a choose elements of the glorified era and ignore the rest.

[1StrongBlackMan]

137. I will agree that the "neoliberal" age ...

(whatever that is, as I've seen the term means so many different things to so many different people, as to be a throw away term) is not an improvement, though it has resulted in increased incomes and opportunities for groups that have historically been shut out.

Can we agree on that?

[Number23]

96. I KNEW you'd be in this moronic thread! This kind of thing is right up your alley

So glad that you posted in here. Not that I expect for it to do even the tiniest bit of good.

[Recursion]

100. I'm like a moth to a flame

sigh

[workinclasszero]

132. Bullshit indeed...Dixiecrats anyone?

Heres some old timey "real dems" for the OP...Dixiecrats
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

Life was good for white males, hell for everybody else though.

[whathehell]

135. Um, no...The Sixties was the decade of Civil Rights when "Dixiecrats turned Republican

Try a little history.

[Recursion]

139. A greater % of GOP Congressmen voted for the Civil Rights Act than Democrats

Half of the D caucus voted against. 1/3rd of the GOP caucus voted against.

I'll take today's Democrats over the Democrats of Yore any day.

[workinclasszero]

142. Damn those pesky facts again

The past is only golden to the ones that ruled it all back then.

[whathehell]

143. Great, but they didn't INITIATE it, did they? Nor have they 'followed up" on it, have they?

You can "take" whatever you want..Your knowledge and experience are a joke next to mine and all those who LIVED through the era.

[workinclasszero]

154. You try it

The States' Rights Democratic Party (usually called the Dixiecrats) was a short-lived segregationist political party in the United States in 1948. It originated as a breakaway faction of the Democratic Party in 1948

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dixiecrat

[jwirr]

140. My nostalgia is definitely NOT for white males. I have supported

FDR Democracy because of its social programs because I was born to a poor small farmer, married a farm laborer and ended up a single mother with 3 children who had a deadbeat dad. One of those children was severely disabled and has needed a lot of care her entire 50+ years of life. I provided that care for 45 years which ended in my living the rest of my life in poverty even to the point of being a homeless senior now.

There is nothing in my reasons for being a FDR Democrat that has anything to do with white men except that my ex and the father of my children was white like I am.

[Recursion]

146. Re-read your post

Last edited Thu May 19, 2016, 11:25 AM - Edit history (1)

There is nothing in my reasons for being a FDR Democrat that has anything to do with white men except that my ex and the father of my children was white like I am.

Really, really think about that. For a minute or so.

[jwirr]

163. I realize that it sounds like I am supporting your idea but

my meaning should be clear. That era provided the progressive programs that I and others including people of color needed to survive and even to get ahead.

The deadbeats are still there today.

[DisgustipatedinCA]

181. I wasn't aware that economies built for all ethnicities required corruption.

[phleshdef]

201. God that is one of the most ignorant statements ever

[RKP5637]

3. We have few real democrats today, the party has changed so drastically, and not for the better IMO.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

4. Nah. All I know is an era of centre-right dems.

Being 18 is not easy okay? From 9/11--war on terror--Iraq--Great Recession--Wiretapping. All of which many dems helped create or did nothing to stop.

[Go Vols]

9. When Raygun took over

I started saving the shit outta money and ...

[liberal_at_heart]

7. Unfortunately not.

[MADem]

8. Late seventies? The party of NO BLACK PEOPLE and NO WOMEN?

Oh wow, those were the days! They were allowed to VOTE, they just weren't allowed to LEAD!!!

[Go Vols]

11. One parent working

and new shit always was the way of the middle class then.

My mother voted at the time as did our black mayor.

[MADem]

20. Your black mayor was an exception in public life.

Black and brown men were poorly represented in the public sphere--and women were paid less and rarely seen.

The exceptions that, by their rarity, proved the rule.

I remember plenty of dual-job families in the seventies, and a shitload of divorce, too. That was the beginning of the end with regard to "staying together for the sake of the children."

Not sure what you mean by "new shit." I don't recall a lot of technological leaps back then. A pocket calculator from Texas Instruments was all the rage for the low price of 110 dollars (about a third of a month's rent in an expensive city). For a quarter in a bar you could play a game of PONG.

It seemed to me that everyone got overly excited about Walkmans in the eighties, and then VCRs, but the seventies didn't seem like a Leaps and Bounds era. People were too busy wearing loud, hideous clothing and doing the hustle, and learning all about cocaine.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

13. And we had a dem president who imprisoned more blacks than any president combined.

Also signed DOMA and deregulated wall street which Black folks were the hardest hit when the shit hit the fan years later.

My oh my how progressive.

[MADem]

23. In the late seventies? You need to hit the books because I'm giving you an F in US History.

Jimmy Carter didn't imprison more blacks, nor did he sign DOMA or deregulate Wall Street.


Good grief. No wonder there's so little acceptable discourse here.

RepubliCON-Watch (552 posts)
And we had a dem president who imprisoned more blacks than any president combined.
View profile
Also signed DOMA and deregulated wall street which Black folks were the hardest hit when the shit hit the fan years later.

My oh my how progressive.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

27. clinton did, duh

[MADem]

29. This thread is about the late seventies. Try, do, to stay on topic and follow the conversation. nt

[Viva_La_Revolution]

30. ok, play stupid, i don't care

[MADem]

39. No, what's stupid is to try and bring Clinton into a thread about the seventies.

And then get huffy about it when objections are raised.

History--it's yours, and if you don't know it, you'll repeat it.

[Go Vols]

53. k

"Before this, from 1932-1976"

[MADem]

56. Bill Clinton was not in public life during that timeframe.

He has no role in this discussion.

[Go Vols]

58. correct

up until ...

[MADem]

66. You can answer your own "..." you know.

He was flirting with local politics in AR, and was elected to the governorship in 79.

He didn't hit the national consciousness until he gave that wonky and interminable nominating speech at the Dukakis convention (88)--and everyone thought that should have killed him. When he said "In closing" the crowd stood up and cheered.

He learned from that, and made history in 92.

[Go Vols]

68. History

followed by the Democratic Party in the ‘90s, and precipitated a rightward political shift as both parties rewrote their policies to compete for the same corporate contributions.

The Bureau of Justice Statistics has released a study which finds that, despite the total number of prisoners incarcerated for drug-related offenses increasing by 57,000 between 1997 and 2004, the proportion of drug offenders to total prisoners in State prison populations stayed steady at 21%.

When I was a kid,China and Russia vied for this.

America,Fuck Yeah

[Scootaloo]

32. Well, shrieking about pale-skinned penises isn't exactly the heights of intellectualism either

But you know, when all you have is a hammer...

[MADem]

33. Huh? What is that in aid of, and what does it have to do with the seventies, which is the thread

topic?

[Scootaloo]

47. Well, every time someone talks about a time before reaganomics...

Clinton supporters come up to decry the white maleness of the time before reaganomics.

Since it makes no damn sense in context, I have to assume it has to do with a phobia pf pallid phalluses.

[MADem]

55. I don't mean to be rude, but did you not observe that the GOP owned six years of the seventies?

Did you not observe that GOP monetary policies resulted in rampant inflation?

Don't any of the dewy-eyed "real Dems" here remember wage and price controls under Nixon, and the laughable "Whip Inflation Now" of Ford?

And when Carter got to the WH, do any of you people remember pushing your rusty ass car in a line a half mile long on EVEN/ODD days to the gas pump? Do you remember buying a giant plastic "needle" to stick in the gas tank to transfer gas from one car to the next? Do you remember having some asshole ice-pick your gas tank to steal your gas because of rationing? Do you remember sitting in a freezing house because there wasn't any fuel to be had?

Oh, yeah, the seventies! Those were the halcyon days! LOL!

I hate to say it, but there's a shitload of obtuse misinformation in the thesis of this effort. The Iranian hostage crisis was icing on the cake for Raygun--Carville did have it right, it was "The Economy, Stupid." Even way back then.

Reagan won the day (another white male) because the economy fucking SUCKED - the hostages were simply extra leverage. People didn't know if he'd be any better, but they were voting for change. And the white Bro crowd that installed him in the WH? They liked him just fine and gave him eight years to fuck up the country.

But he didn't get in because times were good--he got in because times were rusty, polluted, acid-rain AWFUL.

smh.

[Scootaloo]

65. Sure I did. Yet here you are, happily running interference for those policies

'Cause we're talking Democrats, and all you have to contribute is snarling about white males.

Like I said, when all you have is a hammer.

[MADem]

67. I'm saying--and you're missing, apparently--the fact that the seventies SUCKED.

Inflation was out of hand, wage/price controls were instituted by Nixon, it was a decade of misery, stagnant wages, high prices, rampant inflation, rust, pollution and filth.

And WHITE MALES--of both parties--were running the show.


If you think that stating a fact is "snarling," perhaps you are being defensive.


So miss the point all you'd like.

Maybe you should use that hammer of yours that you keep bellowing about to build a few bridges rather than bash heads.

[Scootaloo]

70. No, I catch it. I'm just saying it's not actually relevant to the OP topic

This isn't "gosh, the seventies were a golden era!" it's "I miss when Democrats behaved like Democrats" - and yes, the 70's, maybe early 80's are the last time that could be said with some degree of certainty.

Carter loses. Then Mondale is crushed like a cheeto in an industrial press. Then Dukakais. The Democratic party adopts the then-nascent DLC philosophy of "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." Round 'bout 1985, one could not reliable equate "Democrat" with "liberal" anymore. It's gotten worse since, owing to the cult of bipartisanship.

Rather than recognize any of that, you just use the usual stupid Clinton trick of whining about white men (stupid because you guys are nothing if not reverential of white privilege and male chauvinism.)

Maybe you should use that hammer of yours that you keep bellowing about to build a few bridges rather than bash heads.

I understand that trying to build a bridge towards people known for burning bridges is an exercise in futility. Can't wait for Clinton and her fellows to catch on to this fact. That cult of bipartisanship is going to kill us.

[MADem]

76. This is just ugly and nasty, so I'm out.

Rather than recognize any of that, you just use the usual stupid Clinton trick of whining about white men (stupid because you guys are nothing if not reverential of white privilege and male chauvinism.)

[JI7]

86. Many States supported Tough on Crime Policies including California, NY,etc, people elected Giuliani

Pete Wilson etc.

angry white men in 1994 voted for the gingrich congress.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

88. Meantime, potentially black men voters were in jail because of the drug war disaster.

And the disastrous War on Superpredators.

[JI7]

90. black men are targeted because of race which includes planting fake evidence

this has gone on before clinton .

[RepubliCON-Watch]

94. But why did Clinton push for policies, incarcerating more black people than any other president?

I didn't know about LBJ setting policies by locking up Black people for stupid/racist drug laws.

[JI7]

95. crime is a real issue that needed to be dealt with, that black people get unfairly targeted is

because of racism at all levels of society. not because of clinton.

[RepubliCON-Watch]

97. But we have to be able to call out those who enabled that climate and Bill was an enabler of it.

[JI7]

98. this happened before clinton and it certainly doesn't help to pretend otherwise

and blame clinton for things that are much bigger and longer.

[1StrongBlackMan]

16. ^^^ This ^^^

[reddread]

44. such anti-woman revisionist whitewashing. shocked I tell you.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shirley_Chisholm

[MADem]

168. How pathetic.

You search through THOUSANDS....and find one! ONE!!

And then you pat yourself on the back.

smDh!

[reddread]

169. how hyperbolic

like I needed to search anything to know about that.
sorry.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

159. NO WOMEN? Try telling that to these terrific Dem Congresswomen from the 1970s

Pat Schroeder, Elizabeth Holtzman, Bella Abzug, Shirley Chisholm, Yvonne Braithwaite Burke, Geraldine Ferraro, Ella Grasso, Barbara Jordan, Barbara Mikulski, Patsy Mink, and those are just the ones I remember off the top of my head.

[MADem]

166. Out of how many politicians? Your very "exception that proves the rule" reaching,

giving me a laundry list of rare flowers, in essence, makes my point all the more stark.

How many women were in the NY delegation with Bella, hmmmm? Anything approaching proportional representation?

Didn't think so.

And Shirley won her seat ONLY because of redistricting--she wouldn't have stood a chance otherwise. Look it up.

FWIW, Geraldine didn't go to Washington until 1979--she was not a force to be reckoned with "in the seventies." In fact, when Mondale chose her to serve on the ticket as hiss VP, before they ripped the shit out of her HUSBAND, they first pinged her on her lack of experience. They were a bit shocked at how well she held her own as a trailblazer.

Milkulski went to the House from MD in 77 and didn't get to the Senate until the mid-eighties.

How many women were in the TX delegation with Barbara Jordan? Talk about being alone in the wilderness!

These women didn't even have a place to PEE when they showed up in the halls of power. They were dismissed, disregarded and denigrated. It was very difficult and lonely for them.

How soon people forget.

Here's a link to the total number of women who have EVER served in the House, going back to Jeanette Rankin. Now keep in mind that today we fill 435 seats in that chamber alone. You'll see that most of them served well AFTER the seventies.

They're still WOEFULLY under-represented in public life. Time for that shit to change.

[reddread]

170. accept the F with dignity

it was inevitable.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

190. You're trying to create a diversion

You are trying to defend the indefensible softening of the Democratic Party with a diversionary tactic.

I lived through that era as a twentysomething, and here's what the difference was:

We felt that the Dems were fighting--yes, FIGHTING--for us. You know, FIGHTING, as in taking the initiative and not putting up with any bullshit.

It was a Democratic Senator Frank Church of IDAHO--yes, the same Idaho that is today solidly red--who led the committee that revealed the crimes that the CIA had committed against Americans and citizens of foreign countries.

It was Bella and the other women I mentioned who fought for women's rights and racial equality.

It was the Democratic women, like Barbara Jordan and Elizabeth Holtzman, who were the shining stars of the Watergate Committee.

I suspect that today's Dems, faced with a Watergate-type situation, would have just hushed it up because they didn't want to create a fuss and wanted to let bygones be bygones and to be all bipartisan and stuff.

Hell, that's what they did with Bush's clearly illegal war in Iraq.

No, I remember the politics of the past very clearly.

Once Reagan got into office, the Dems took the wrong lesson (or grabbed the cynical opportunity to pretend that they had taken the wrong lesson) and got all mooshy when it came to opposing Reagan's destructive policies.

Suddenly the Republicans were the Party of Big (although Horrible) Ideas, and the Dems acted as if they were helpless, especially the accursed Democratic Leadership Council, which somehow decided that what red states found appealing about Reagan was not his TV celebrity status or his fake religiosity or his jovial mannerism or his obnoxious flag waving but low taxes on the rich and trillions in military spending

The DLC was like the parent who looks the other way when the other parent abuses the child, and when the child complains, tells the child not to make such a fuss.

By 1970s standards, we now have two Republican Parties, and the Clintons have been a huge part of it.

[MADem]

191. No, I am not--the sexist, racist "good old days" weren't so good.

The days before Roe v. Wade weren't so good.

The days when women were paid less than men for doing the same job weren't so good.

The days when want ads were listed by GENDER weren't so good.

The days when employers could fire you--or not hire you--because you were black or female (or both) weren't so good.

The days when black people couldn't vote in the south weren't so good.

This rose-colored glasses view of the good old days that's being pumped out lately to try to "prove" that things are worse now might make for feel-good commentaries, but they aren't based in fact. Unless, of course, you are a white male who had the catbird seat all to yourself back then in those "good old days."

smh.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

192. Please stick to the subject, which is NOT "general conditions in the 1970s"

The subject is how the Dems used to put forward initiatives to help ordinary people and now let the Republicans steamroller them or, even worse, sign on to bad Republican ideas, such as the Iraq War or the Patriot Act.

The ACA, originally a Republican idea, is timid compared to such monumental achievements as Social Security, Medicare, the G.I.Bill, and the Civil Rights Act.

They changed the direction of this country.

Now it's all lame excuses. We can't do this or that "because it would never pass Congress."

I'm old enough to remember how hard it was to pass the Civil Rights Bill. But the Dems did it anyway because it was the right thing to do.

There were even objections to Medicare from the Republican side, but the Dems pushed it through anyway.

Where is that kind of courage and determination? Certainly not Obama, because he didn't even try to force the Blue Dogs to allow a public option in the ACA.

Hell, even Reagan, dumb as he was, knew how to get what he wanted. Bush got what he wanted.

Unfortunately, both got their way with the outright complicity of many Democrats.

THAT is what we are talking about.

[MADem]

194. Which initiatives? None of the achievements you mentioned took place in the seventies.

Your "facts" are COMPLETELY out of order, to put it kindly.

Trent Lott, in college, was a "college Democrat." Many others, too. Strom Thurmond was a Dem for YEARS before he flipped. Remember Jesse Helms? Bet you don't remember that HE USED TO BE A DEMOCRAT.

"The Dems" didn't pass the Civil Rights Act. LBJ did--by bribing, threatening, and strong-arming people he had dirt on/knew he could flip. And he could not have passed that without the GOP. In fact, MORE Republicans voted for it than did Democrats.

Also, when southern Democrats were racist assholes, they were countered by REPUBLICANS from the north, who leaned on the abolitionist history and were very pro-civil rights.

If you look at the VOTES, you will see that overwhelmingly (in some cases, entirely) Democratic delegations from states like Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Louisiana, etc. voted AGAINST the Act. Don't believe me? Here, click the link and see for yourself: https://www.govtrack.us/congress/votes/88-1964/h182

Read this--it will open your eyes: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/28/republicans-party-of-civil-rights

80% of Republicans in the House and Senate voted for the bill. Less than 70% of Democrats did. Indeed, Minority Leader Republican Everett Dirksen led the fight to end the filibuster. Meanwhile, Democrats such as Richard Russell of Georgia and Strom Thurmond of South Carolina tried as hard as they could to sustain a filibuster.

Of course, it was also Democrats who helped usher the bill through the House, Senate, and ultimately a Democratic president who signed it into law. The bill wouldn't have passed without the support of Majority Leader Mike Mansfield of Montana, a Democrat. Majority Whip Hubert Humphrey, who basically split the Democratic party in two with his 1948 Democratic National Convention speech calling for equal rights for all, kept tabs on individual members to ensure the bill had the numbers to overcome the filibuster.

Put another way, party affiliation seems to be somewhat predictive, but something seems to be missing. So, what factor did best predicting voting?

You don't need to know too much history to understand that the South from the civil war to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 tended to be opposed to minority rights. This factor was separate from party identification or ideology. We can easily control for this variable by breaking up the voting by those states that were part of the confederacy and those that were not....

You can see that geography was far more predictive of voting coalitions on the Civil Rights than party affiliation. What linked Dirksen and Mansfield was the fact that they weren't from the south. In fact, 90% of members of Congress from states (or territories) that were part of the Union voted in favor of the act, while less than 10% of members of Congress from the old Confederate states voted for it. This 80pt difference between regions is far greater than the 15pt difference between parties.

You should read Caro. His material on how that went down is fascinating.


It was RACISM, not "Dems doing progressive things," that flipped the south to the GOP--this is not a secret, or a surprise. LBJ said he expected our party to 'pay' for that for a generation or more. He was right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Democrats#Losing_the_South

Vulgar language in this, courtesy of Atwater, but illucidative: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy#Roots_of_the_Southern_strategy_.281963.E2.80.931972.29

Those who don't know their own history are condemned to repeat it.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

202. You keep changing the subject

It's no use continuing this conversation.

[MADem]

206. I responded to points YOU brought up.

I told you that REPUBLICANS cast more votes to pass the Civil Rights Act, though... and that kind of ruined your meme re: Democrats.

This fiction that We Were So Much Better Back Then is just that--fiction.

We are better NOW--we have a party that actually looks a bit more like America. We still have a ways to go. We need more women, more people who are black and brown and Asian/Pacific Islander, more people who are not Xtian, more people who have "no religious preference," more young people, more disabled people, more gay-and-out people. More people from all walks of life--rich, poor, rural, urban. We are more diverse now than we've ever been. We can do better, we can do more, but we're better now than we were in 1964 when LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act into law.

You can count the black guys at the signing of the doggone Civil Rights Act on the fingers of ONE hand...and where are the women? It's like playing Where's Waldo! smh!

[Chasstev365]

12. Spot On!

Ideologically, Ike and Nixon are like the Clintons and Reagan would be a moderate in today's GOP. Many of us are SICK of the betrayal of the roots of the Democratic Party and that is why we support Bernie. Many DUers never knew a party that actually stood for the Middle Class. VERY SAD!

[merrily]

45. Not only the middle class, but the poor. Hardly any politician even utters that word anymore.

[Go Vols]

64. it is really sad

[HooptieWagon]

17. Yep. That was before Dems acted like Republicans.

[Glorfindel]

19. Yes, I am. My parents were proud socialists who thought FDR was the greatest human being ever

They lived through World War I and the Great Depression. They despised Republicans, and they were right to do so. "Hoover" was an obscenity to my parents and those of their generation. To be perfectly honest, I'm glad they didn't live long enough to see the Democratic Party drift to the right. Thank you for an interesting question and an opportunity to contribute something a bit positive to the ongoing discussion.

[Go Vols]

42. +1

[Punkingal]

75. Wow...I identify with every word of your post.

I said the other day that I was glad my parents aren't around to see this.

[rbrnmw]

21. sigh

[MADem]

41. What you said. nt

[Go Vols]

46. no shit

we are run by people with big money now

[Recursion]

61. Yeah

smh

[wildeyed]

200. Perfect!

[Thirties Child]

24. Yes. I remember them and I voted for them.

So sad to compare what once was with what is.

[closeupready]

34. There's always SOMEONE I like, but Tip O'Neill was the

last really great, fighting liberal Democrats that I can recall - wasn't afraid to tell Reagan off, and shut down the House if necessary. Really miss him and his generation of Democrats.

[whathehell]

160. Yes, he was one of my favorites..

Tough old Irish guy.

[PFunk1]

38. Yup.

Sometimes I now think I'm the last of a dying breed.

(note real dems are still around, They just call themselves democratic independents or independents now)

[SidDithers]

51. This looks like a job for Apostrophe Man!!...

Sid

[Go Vols]

60. lol

[Scootaloo]

72. Apostrophe Man needs a visit from Comma Girl.

[MADem]

79. Thread win! nt

[Go Vols]

52. I don't see this on TV since Raygun

[JI7]

83. now it's "buy local" "support small business" etc

[RufusTFirefly]

62. In 1972, McGovern delegates were refreshingly diverse

But the DNC cracked down on that pretty quickly.

If I'm not mistaken, that's Shirley MacLaine and Willie Brown.

It was also an era when "Liberal Republican" was not an oxymoron. They were to the left of Hillary Clinton.

[jwirr]

158. And that diversity was not just at the convention. The office

I ran in Nebraska was very diversified.

[villager]

77. That's what's so sad and pathetic about this laughable "Underground" and its RW posters. nt

[MADem]

80. Sorry your browser doesn't open to any other page--it's tough being a prisoner of Skinner, then?

[2banon]

85. I remember, life was still hard, but a hell of a lot better then

Before this, from 1932-1976, the Democratic Party as a whole was far more progressive. The issues and approaches advocated today by Bernie Sanders were considered mainstream Democratic ideas by Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and Lyndon Johnson, and even many moderate Republicans. It was common to support strict financial regulation, liberal immigration, social services for the poor, and progressive tax policies.

[cheapdate]

87. FDR, JFK, and LBJ had strong Democratic majorities

in congress the whole time they were in office.

[Go Vols]

89. Because people liked their ideas?

People used to follow/vote good ideas,really.

[JI7]

91. sadly many thought civil rights were a bad idea and started turning republican

[Go Vols]

92. .

[Octafish]

111. Ideas like Jobs for All? Peace in our Time?

Using the powers of government for ALL Americans -- not just the rich?

Which ideas?

[jwirr]

161. Exactly.

[cheapdate]

171. Congress makes the law,

the president signs it.

The idea that JFK was some extraordinary progressive, or that LBJ was more progressive than Obama and a 'real Democrat' in contrast, is laughable.

Both LBJ and FDR were pushed more than they led on progressive issues.

None of them ever had to face a divided government, or approve only legislation sent to them by a rabidly ideological conservative House. FDR wasn't forced into high-stakes negotiations over something as simple as extending unemployment benefits during a historic recession, nor did he face unyielding and hostile opposition to virtually his every proposal.

[Go Vols]

93. interlude

[highprincipleswork]

104. We need a NEW NEW DEAL, and that era of Liberalism was not for white males only. Those are the

years when Roe V. Wade went down, in case you don't remember. Those are years of Kennedy and Johnson and Civil Rights progress as we know it.

These years are a meek and mild pale comparison to those years, when even Eisenhower was far more Progressive than half the opinions I see expressed on DU today.

[whathehell]

138. Yes, the Third Wave of Feminism started (and no, it wasn't just for white women)

I LIVED, WORKED and protested during that era...Most of the naysayers, I'm betting, did not.

[baldguy]

108. Nostalgia for a time that never was.

Exactly like conservatives pining for the perfect world of the 1950s that never existed.

You want REAL Democrats? Look out the window. The REAL Democrats are the Democrats of today - facing today's problems, battling Republicans today, and trying to make today a better place.

The REAL Democrat in the race today certainly isn't the one who has never been a Democrat (even in the '60s & '70s).

[Recursion]

109. *Applause*

[auntpurl]

110. +10000

[whathehell]

134. Bull. Shit. Unlike you, I suspect, I actually LIVED and WORKED during those times

and can attest to it's comparatively positive, if not 'perfect", aspects.

One doesn't needs a 'perfect world" which never was nor will be, in order to be compare one era to another.

[baldguy]

144. "comparatively positive"? There's a whole herd of bulls producing shit, you got there.

Women were second-class citizens by law & custom, race riots all over the place, student protests all over the place, 300 new dead bodies a week coming out of Vietnam. Manufacturing jobs began to be shipped overseas during that era, and the middle class began it's slow decline. The chaos at the 1968 DNC set the stage for Nixon, Reagan, Bush I & Bush II. And just forget about LBGTQ rights - they were non-existent. Remember that?

[whathehell]

157. Yes, "comparatively positive" Are the words too big for you?

LOL..Don't talk to me about "women's rights' Bald Guy, you see, I AM a woman who lived through the era, duh.

The Sixties is when everything STARTED, or at least 'took off" -- Black Civil Rights, Women's rights, Latino

and Native American rights...Are you getting the picture?

The "chaos at the '68 convention 'set the stage for Nixon, Reagan...and whaaat?...Even BUSH I and II??

Please, honey...a whole LOT of history happened between the '68 convention and frigging BUSH -- You must

have a problem with 'lost time' or something .

[Algernon Moncrieff]

116. Certainly I'm old enough to remember Bill Clinton

[firebrand80]

125. I certainly wouldn't have been a democrat back then nt

[tonyt53]

126. Sure do, but their approach is very unlike what Bernie is trying to do. That is why they succeeded

[VulgarPoet]

129. I know what real Democrats were thanks to history books, but

I don't think I'll ever see one in my life.

[Octafish]

152. They're all around you.

JFK vs. Poppy, or: 'The New Frontier' meets 'More Will Than Wallet'

You're one yourself, VulgarPoet. That's why so many work so hard to convince you otherwise.

[whathehell]

165. There's a few left..

Elizabeth Warren is certainly one.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

153. I remember when the Democrats were the Party of Big Ideas, not

the Party of Half-Hearted Defense and Lame Excuses.

[whathehell]

164. Yes, me too.

[BootinUp]

172. Some of us don't accept the attempted brainwashing around here. nt

[The Second Stone]

173. I remember when Dem appointees got health insurance

for people with pre-existing conditions, and marriage for everyone in every state.

I also remember when Nader wrecked the country by claiming there was no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush and now I am looking at people claiming there is no difference between Democrats and Republicans again. I remember when they killed Bobby. I remember when they said Jimmy Carter was corrupt. I remember when they said Al Gore claimed to invent the internet.

I also remember when W appointees constitutionally overturned the Voting Rights Act that was almost unanimously passed in the Senate.

I remember my friend Terry Coopage (RIP), Bartcop, and how he was banned from DU.

Yeah, I have a long memory. FYS (For You Specially.)

[Actor]

177. Not one of them DOESNT go out of their way to show up in November and vote for the Dem

Not one.

[Fast Walker 52]

184. especially against Trump, for god's sake

[onenote]

188. Life was good?

So who exactly qualifies as a "real Democrat" in your eyes?

Were the majority of the Democrats in the Senate and House who voted to override FDR's veto of the Smith-Connally Anti-Strike Bill-1943 "real Democrats"?

Were the Democrats that stayed silent in the face of the order to inter Japanese-Americans during WWII "real Democrats"?

Were the Democrats that supported New Deal economic programs but opposed anti-lynching laws "real Democrats"

Democrats have never held party members to the sort of strict orthodoxy that we have seen the Repubs, through the rise of the tea party, impose on themselves. I don't like the idea of Democrats starting down that road now. While progressive Democrats should push for the party to get behind progressive ideals, the willingness of some Democrats to compromise or to not adhere to every progressive position should not result in their complete demonization. In general, the Democrat who makes economic reform a priority but is less interested in gun control, or who supports abortion rights or the rights of African-Americans to safely drive the streets of America without harassment by law enforcement above banking reform still has more in common with each other than they do with any repubs.

[wyldwolf]

197. You're confusing Democrats with non-Dems who tried to hijack the party - Wallace, Nader, Sanders,

etc.

[mvd]

205. I voted yes. The first Democrat running for President I remember was Mondale,

and while the party was talking against the New Deal even in the McGovern era, I remember him as liberal overall. Maybe not as much as Sanders, but he might have been right behind Bernie and Warren in today's party.