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Introduction
- University of Illinois Press
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Introduction timothy stanley and jonathan bell At the beginning of the twenty-first century, the future of American liberalism is uncertain. Liberals and their allies in social reform have much to celebrate, but plenty of challenges ahead. The difficult choices faced by the Obama administration are representative. On the one hand, the election of an African American president on a platform of activist government and health care reform was a stunning achievement. It fulfilled the promise of the civil rights revolution, while putting together an alliance of ethnic minorities, liberals, youth, labor, women, and the urban poor that promised a revival of the New Deal coalition. On the other hand, President Obama and the Democratic congress faced immediate and serious opposition from a revived conservative movement, big business, and the right-wing media. Many saw the credit crunch as an opportunity for social reform, but ballooning deficits reduced its appeal to Middle America. Nor did the Democratic majority always hold up under the weight of its own contradictions. Opportunities were missed and squandered by bad prioritizing and internal strife. There is a widespread feeling that, at the moment of their greatest opportunity since 1964, liberals might have blown it. This book considers the challenges, setbacks, and accomplishments of American liberal reformers in the twentieth century. Covering themes such as gender, class, labor, race, urban development, and underlying ideology, ten experts in their given fields have identified ways in which liberal politics has helped shape the nation’s political landscape over the last half century. All the writers are concerned with the work of mainstream liberals—officeholders , urban planners, social issue activists, trade unionists. They are situated mostly in the Democratic Party, although both parties have embraced 2 . timothy stanley & jonathan bell progressive and reactionary policies at different times. The essays assess the motivations of social reformers, the conditions under which they operated, the tactics they employed, and the outcome of their endeavors. Some were heroes to the cause, some hurt it. All were genuine in their desire to transform America and expand equality of opportunity. The essays pay particular attention to the importance of grassroots coalition efforts to the functioning of “high politics” and policy making. Although all of these authors highlight the shortcomings of liberalism, they also acknowledge that it remains a vibrant movement full of potential. The Historical Consensus Making change happen in the twentieth century has been a difficult process, and the historiography reflects that. American politics has shifted to the right since the heyday of liberalism in the 1960s. Identification with the Democrats has declined and the Party has lost seven out of eleven presidential elections since 1968. Popular reaction to the social liberation and antiwar movements of the swinging sixties combined with antitax sentiment in the stagnating seventies to produce the Reagan Revolution in 1980. President Reagan’s assault on taxes and spending tapped into an instinctive American antipathy toward big government. Fear that liberals were using state machinery to promote cultural revolution from above forged a powerful electoral alliance between social and fiscal conservatives that Democrats struggled to break.1 Only when the Democratic Party rejected much of its liberal past did it win the presidency, in 1992. The economic and electoral success of Bill Clinton’s administration fueled the popular suspicion that New Deal and Great Society liberalism is unpopular and anachronistic.2 One might even suggest that the few moments of clear Democratic success have been thanks to Republican errors. Watergate, the recession of 1992, and the credit crunch of 2008 all certainly contributed to electing Democrats, who then struggled to sell government-driven reform to a skeptical public. Several key liberal legislative goals have been frustrated. The 1930s and 1960s saw remarkable strides made in the right to form unions, business regulation, civil rights, and social welfare.3 The record is more mixed from the late 1960s onward. Some important pieces of equalities legislation have either been defeated (the Equal Rights Amendment) or watered down after popular backlash (affirmative action).4 The slow advance of gay rights is a case in point. Vacillating leadership from the Democratic Party has overseen delay in reform (allowing gays and lesbians to serve in the military) and [3.81.72.247] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 15:08 GMT) introduction · 3 significant defeats (the outlawing of gay marriage in California in 2008).5 Public education remains underfunded and its syllabus controversial.6 Health care reform has been piecemeal and unsatisfactory to many liberals. While Medicaid...