Uh. Viet Nam? LBJ?Yeah, the reasons why Bobby Kennedy would have easily been elected. But then he was shot.
A good number of people who should know said Robert Kennedy would have pulled out of Vietnam early and worked towards a more populist Democratic Party, focused on civil rights and narrowing of income gaps. But we didn't get that.
Instead, we got eight years of Nixon, the southern strategy, the equating of Democrats with the counter-culture, and a sort of de-legitimizing of valid Democratic causes that would have had a viable voice had RFK not been killed.
So perhaps you are right that Democrats started losing power in the late sixties, but I think your reasoning, that it somehow had to do with the message, and not the messenger, is flawed.
We were robbed of gifted leadership, and that is a loss not easily measured in statistics.
If Bobby Kennedy had survived, pulled out of Vietnam, and worked towards socio-economic equity, do you really think we'd be having this conversation?
But that's neither here nor there, for our purposes.
You say, "By the early 1990s, Country sentiments were evident among much of the public. In 1964, over 70 percent of the public said that they could trust Washington to do what was right most or all of the time; by early 1994, only 19 percent expressed similar confidence (Phillips 1994: 7). In 1964, when asked, "Would you say the government is run by a few big interests looking out for themselves or that it is run for the benefit of all people," nearly 40 percent more people agreed with the latter than with the former. In 1992 that sentiment had reversed itself, with 60 percent more people believing that the government was run for the benefit of special interests than those who believed it was run for the benefit of all. (Stanley and Niemi: 169)."
And yet you seem to believe that there is no correlation between this sentiment and the growing reliance of the Democratic Party on corporate donors, and the failure to support traditional Democratic positions of social justice and protection against greedy corporations?
You said that public cynicism caused the Democrats to fall out of favor with the public because they were the party of government activism, but isn't that cynicism caused by the Democratic establishment's failure to protect American workers from Nixon, Reagan, and Bush? And isn't it possible that the failure of the Democrats to effectively promote government activism from 1968 onward contributed to that perception problem?
You said that the DLC reflects the values of FDR and Truman, but would the DLC favor breaking up media oligopolies? That seems like something the heirs to FDR and Truman might be up for, but the DLC is the last place you would hear those words from.
You asserted that the period in question was dominated by the 60's counterculture, but other than McGovern and a few people who worked for his campaign at various levels, (Gary Hart and Bill Clinton, for example), I'm not sure how you can substantiate this assertion that the counterculture was running the Democratic Party.
McGovern's nomination wasn't even decided until 2 in the morning, and the resulting general election was so disastrous that no one would ever trust the counterculture around serious politics again.
That is, until Bill Clinton, who was quickly pigeon-holed as the draft-dodging, pot-smoking hippie, and yet still managed to get serious corporate backing and win a general election against a seemingly out-of-touch George Herbert Walker Bush.
In terms of presidential politics, Dukakis, Mondale, and Carter certainly weren't an electoral reflection of the anti-war left.
You are correct that Carter's election was a reflection of Nixon's scandals. His failure to beat Reagan was largely a reflection of his inability to prevent economic crises and deal with the Iran hostage situation.
Mondale was an establishment liberal, not a counterculture liberal. I'm of the impression that Dukakis was no hippie either.
But despite your questionable attempts to substantiate your claims that the DLC somehow is carrying the mantle of the FDR-Kennedy legacy after three decades of the counterculture blowing it, you seem to have a flawed idea that policies are the main motivating factor in the voting public's choices.
But we know that policies are often trumped in voter preference, especially in close elections, by intangible qualities such as likeability and trustworthiness.
Which is why we haven't had a winning Presidential candidate since Clinton.
And you seem to say that somehow the electorate has left the Democratic Party on domestic issues, but you should know as well as anyone else that the only domestic issue that doesn't favor the Democratic Party is taxes. On education, health care, the economy, Democrats are preferred.
The Republicans have cheated by trying to tell the American electorate that they can have all of the Government's services and tax cuts too.
The failure of Democratic candidates to communicate the erroneousness of this, and in fact, the refusal to even try, has resulted in disastrous consequences, both for the economy and the federal budget deficit.
A likeable candidate like Bill Clinton can explain why taxes are necessary and have the American people believe him. Al Gore or John Kerry, notsomuch, and they rarely even tried to make the case.
Long story short, a charismatic and believable candidate who makes principled, if unpopular, decisions will always do better in an election, and any assessment you make of the Democratic Party's success should factor that in over issues.
When the DLC goes to the well to find a candidate, that should be their main criteria. I'm sure from your avatar that you agree with me that Wes Clark is that guy.