> liberal dems were, perhaps, done in by contradictions of their location in
political
> arena/along political spectrum, but they contributed mightily to current
situation
> (which has been mostly bad for working folks), maybe question that should
be asked
> is not why democratic party liberalism has been in eclipse, but why it was
successful
> at all... michael hoover
I am basically with you about the internal structural condition shifts and the Democrat failure to address burgeoning social problems - which perhaps is not a failure but a choice, since talking about social problems mobilizes more attention and support than actually solving them.
However, you seem to neglect the foreign policy dimension - after WW2 the US was in an intense competition with x-USSR for world domination, and the key Soviet strategy in that competition was to take advantage of the social problems created by the US-backed system. So the US elites had to do something about those problems - at least on the surface - to be competitive in the cold war. That can explain quite a bit why Democrat party liberalism scored some successes in between the late 1950s and 1970s and then has been in eclipse as the Soviet "threat" abated.
Wojtek