[lbo-talk] Warm summers or dark ages?

[Michael Dawson]

Just as seeing the 1950/60s boom as the Golden Age is bad history, so is
seeing the New Deal/FDR as something other than an exception to a rule.  The
DP has always sucked, except between 1932 and 1944.  Wilson was an asshole;
Adlai Stevenson was pathetic; Clark Kellogg and Hubert Humphrey were the
leading 1960s Demos.  We should explicitly admit this constant sucking,
IMHO, and also explicitly cry out for a New New Deal coalition to attack it.
You can't revive a lost precedent if you delude yourself about its origin
and nature.

The 1950s were worse than the present in virtually every way, if you bother
to look behind the TV reruns.

Naturalizing and idealizing the 1950s has been one of our overlords' great
ideological achievements.

-----Original Message-----
From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org]
On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
Sent: Sunday, October 03, 2004 8:45 AM
To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Warm summers or dark ages?

Jon Johanning wrote:


>I don't know how old you were in the '50s, but I was there. 
>Certainly things have gone downhill somewhat since then, but there 
>have also been many "material improvements."

No! No!!!! Everything sucks and is getting worse!!!!!

I've been reading Jeffrey Stonecash's book on class and party in 
American politics, and he's got some great stuff in there about the 
politics of the 1950s that, I'm sad to say, supports some of Nathan's 
points about the Dems. The DP was hardly very "liberal" in the 1950s. 
A major chunk of its Congressional representation came from the South 
- poor districts in the South where black people weren't allowed to 
vote and poor white people didn't vote, meaning they were elected by 
affluent racist reactionaries. On most policy issues there was little 
difference between Reps and non-Southern Dems. What's changed really 
in the last 30 years is that the Reps moved far to the right. There's 
more difference between D and R now than there was 40-50 years ago.

It's not easy for me to say this, since I used to believe quite the
opposite.

Doug
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