I don't even buy that most people, activists, politicians, or "leftists", or more rightwing today than then. The global and economic context has shifted and therefore decreased the bargaining power of working class forces against corporate forces. Changes in technology and the financial infrastructure has made companies more footloose and systematic outsourcing and decentralization has given corporations a greater ability to use the threat of capital strike and flight to veto a lot more public policy or undermine them in practice.
That means that the same amount of left power today cannot demand the same tax and regulatory concessions; we actually need more power and mobilization to achieve the same results as then. And the very footloose nature of capital has contributed to less union density, thereby decreasing a large component of potential left power.
Nixon represented the compomises capital was prepared to make thirty years ago to assure the stability needed for profits. But that was also the period where capital, having made some painful concessions, plotted to avoid having to do so in the future. They launched a massive wave of union-busting, began decentralizing factory plants across the country (better to play states off against each other) and throughout the world, and worked as hard as possible to avoid having the reality of sunk capital costs force them to compromise with working class forces. While never completely successful, capital has significantly advanced its ability to exit rather than compromise when left public policy advances.
That is one reason why global cooperation to rein in corporate power and harmonize policy is needed in order to end the ability of corps to play states off against each other in the race to the bottom. Otherwise, any level of left mobilzation will be constrained by rational fears of the population than any promised gains will be offset by economic losses due to capital flight.
-- Nathan Newman