.>
>The difference between Nixon's 70s and Clinton's 90s was the character of
>the Congress, where in the 70s there were more Democrats and the GOP was
>less powerful.
>.
It's true that (Northern) Democrats were better inthose days too. But so were Republicans. Those days there were lots of genuinely liberal GOPsters like Rockefeller and John Lindsay, this tradition continued in the states for longer than it did at the national level, with the likes of Millikan in Michigan and Jim Thompson in Illinois. The old liberal GOPsters supported the ERA, and made common cause with the Northern Dems to pass the 1964 Civil Rights Act, opposed by Southern Dixiecrats andeven comparatively liberal Southern Dems like Fullbright and Gore Sr. I clerked for a Republican judge, Ilana Diamond Rovner, who was clearly the most liberal active judge on the 7th Cir., appointed to the district court by reagan and to the Court of Appeals by Bush I (himself something of an old-style liberal Repug, when he followed his instincts, as with the Americans with Disabilities Act and the 1991 Civil Righta Act Amendments). Nixon was not one of these, but he was in the center of a party that was far more liberal than either party is now; it wasn't just Dems who pulled him to the left.
Of course there was also a nonpartisan and sometimes radical movement in the streets that loathed the Dems and pulled both parties leftwards.
But it's not inapposite to point out that the Dems of today are to the right of Nixon, that's why some of us have had it with them.
jks
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