Have we ever had a real liberal as president?

[tblue]

Obama is not a true liberal, IMHO. It pains me to say it, but maybe by accepting that fact I can stop getting my hopes up that he's gonna start leading this country in a strongly progressive, rather than a pragmatic, communitarian, bipartisan direction that often runs counter to what liberals want.

Obama is not unique in this. He's not the only Democratic president who was not a liberal. But have we ever had a strongly progressive president in, say, the last 50 years? Ok, 60 years. Since FDR?

In my lifetime, I don't think so. Is it out of the realm of possibility for the US to have a liberal president? Or have I been waiting all my life for something that will never be?

[Blue_In_AK]

1. Not in my lifetime.

I'm 63. I'd like to see one before I die, but I'm not holding my breath.

[timeforpeace]

44. As liberal is commonly defined? Yeah, we got one now. As it's defined here? Impossible.

[Blue_In_AK]

45. You're probably right,

but I can always dream. I want EVERYTHING to change. :)

[leftstreet]

2. Nixon kinda was

:hide:

[Blue_In_AK]

4. It didn't really seem like it at the time.

What was I missing?

[leftstreet]

11. Yeah, maybe more so in retrospect

He was responsible for things like the EPA, OSHA, Supplemental Security Income. He proposed a guaranteed minimum income (lost on that), plus wanted 2/3 of "drug war" funding to go to treatment, not punishment.

Stuff like that.

But whenever you hear his name it's basically just "Watergate" or "Vietnam" or whatever.
Kinda sad

[iamjoy]

25. Nixon Proposed Universal Health Care

according to an August 26, 2009 article in Newsweek, President Nixon proposed a health care plan that was probably more "liberal" than what we have in Congress now. Senator Ted Kennedy led the defeat of it - not liberal enough for him.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/thegaggle/archive/2009/08/26/echoes-of-kennedy-s-battle-with-nixon-in-health-care-debate.aspx

[leftstreet]

29. Yep

He surely did

[niyad]

62. did you see the part in "sicko" where nixon was talking to edward kaisier, just before we got hmo's?

kind of hard to square that with him proposing universal health care.

[ruggerson]

33. Didn't Nixon also basically start Food Stamps?

He and LBJ were the most liberal domestically in the last seventy years. But both were destroyed by tragic flaws.

[leftstreet]

37. The food stamp budget increased dramatically

but I don't know that he actually started it

I remember (vaguely now) talk of Nixon speaking to Ag/Farm reps after he'd watched the documentary Hunger In America and he was pretty upset about it.

Don't know if that's really true though.

[laughingliberal]

13. We all missed it, likely, due to focus on Viet Nam &, then, Watergate

Here's an excerpt from a good article on him:


Nixon Reconsidered
Dialogues
This article is adapted from his forthcoming book, The Age of Reagan: A Chronicle of the Closing Decades of the American Century.
August 1999

by: Steven Hayward

The 25th anniversary last week of President Richard Nixon’s resignation brought back a flood of confused recollections from those troubled late years of the mid-1970s. A new poll showed not surprisingly that a large number of Americans are fuzzy about exactly what Watergate was all about, and there appears to be some creeping symmetry from the Clinton impeachment experience, with a plurality of Americans now saying Nixon should have stuck it out and fought the charges against him.

Watergate will forever cast a shadow over Nixon’s legacy, and distort our understanding of the character of his administration. Liberals then and now revile Nixon-an attitude which he reciprocated. There are many sources of this animosity, going back to his role in the exposure of Alger Hiss’s espionage in 1948 and his “Red-baiting" campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. Liberals would never forgive these transgressions against good will and good taste. “Whatever the rights and wrongs of the matter,” journalists Louis Chester, Godfrey Hodgson, and Bruce Page wrote in their fine book An American Melodrama, "there is no doubt that there exists in America a durable reservoir of hostility toward Richard Nixon." Quite aside from the personal animosity Nixon generated, there was also an undercurrent that Nixon’s election in 1968 was a fluke, that his administration was somehow illegitimate, because, after all, the Democrats are the natural ruling party. Nixon was only the second Republican president since Hoover, and the first, Eisenhower, was discounted because his election was seen as a reflection of his personal popularity (Democrats had wanted him to run as their candidate before Ike declared himself a Republican), and not as a sign that Republicans had genuine appeal to a majority of voters. Even Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had urged Democrats in 1967 to work with thoughtful conservatives, shared this condescension toward Republicans: “The Republicans cannot govern on any sustained basis in America. They simply do not have the intellectual or moral basis on which to build consensus. . . They had no program, far less a mandate to put one in effect. They had almost no thinkers, almost no writers. . . Its periods in office have been and are likely to continue to be little more than interludes brought on by Democratic internal dissidence."

It is largely because of these hardened personal and political positions that conservatives then and now have tended to rally to Nixon’s cause while liberals maintain a blind hatred for him. In fact the Nixon public policy record would justify reversing these allegiances; any other president who compiled Nixon’s domestic and foreign record would be regarded as standing firmly in the liberal progressive tradition. Johnson has gone down in the history books as the big spender for social welfare programs, yet federal spending grew faster during Nixon’s tenure than during Johnson’s. It was under Nixon that social spending came to exceed defense spending for the first time. Social spending soared from $55 billion in 1970 (Nixon’s first budget) to $132 billion in 1975, from 28 percent of the federal budget when LBJ left office to 40 percent of the budget by the time Nixon left in 1974. While Nixon would criticize and attempt to reform welfare, he nonetheless approved massive increases in funding for other Great Society programs such as the Model Cities program and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Some of the changes in spending policies that Nixon supported, such as automatic cost-of-living increases for Social Security recipients and other entitlement programs, contributed to runaway spending trends in successive decades. Federal spending for the arts, which went mostly to cultural elites who hated Nixon, quadrupled. Economist Herbert Stein, who served on Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisers, summed up this dubious record: "The administration that was against expanding the budget expanded it greatly; the administration that was determined to fight inflation ended by having a large amount of it."

The explosion in spending was matched by an equally dramatic explosion in federal regulation-from an administration that regarded itself as pro-business. The number of pages in the Federal Register (the roster of federal rules and regulations) grew only 19 percent under Johnson, but a staggering 121 percent under Nixon. In civil rights, Nixon expanded the regime of "affirmative action" racial quotas and set-asides far beyond what Johnson had done. In other words, Nixon consolidated the administrative state of the Great Society in much the same way that President Eisenhower (for whom Nixon served as Vice President) consolidated the New Deal. Ronald Reagan would run and govern as much against the legacy of Nixon as he would the legacy of the Great Society, and it was a number of Nixon’s administrative creations that would cause Reagan the most difficulty during his White House years. Yet at the same time Nixon deserves the credit for assembling the new political coalition of working class and ethnic voters who would later become known as “Reagan Democrats.” Nixon was the first Republican to win a majority of working class, Catholic, and labor union voters, as well as voters with only a grade school education. In the political sense Nixon played Moses to Reagan’s Joshua. This is Nixon’s greatest paradox.

http://www.ashbrook.org/publicat/dialogue/hayward.html

I think those of us who lean left would be turning cartwheels to see some of the policies of Nixon again. Other policies, not so much. But, he was far to the left of most elected Democrats today. Hell, Goldwater was to the left of some of today's Democrats.

[Blue_In_AK]

19. For me, Vietnam overshadowed everything in those days,

so it was hard to focus on any of the good things that Nixon might have been doing. He had such a bad attitude towards protesters, too, so I pretty much hated him. Of course, that was pre-Reagan/Bushes, so, as you say, he doesn't look nearly so bad in retrospect.

[laughingliberal]

20. Yes, for me, too. :(

Never thought I'd see the day I'd want Nixon back but I got there during the Bush years.

[jwirr]

32. You had better duck down behind that wall!!!!

[bobbolink]

34. Yup, our last liberal president.

He wanted a guaranteed national income.

Damned socialist! :)

[Lorien]

57. Endangered Species Act

Clean Water Act. Those sorts of things would only be proposed by Kucinich today.

[WeDidIt]

3. Nope, never

The closest was Jefferson and he owned slaves.

[anonymous171]

5. FDR was the last. Although he was not a pure liberal

His stances on civil rights left a lot to be desired (in hindsight.) However, he was still most leftist than any other president we have had since.

[BrklynLiberal]

9. That is who came to mind for me as well, with the same caveat.

[gopiscrap]

35. Same here..but I also had the

qualms about his civil rights record.

[Skink]

16. Teddy Roosevelt was the progressive we now wish we had.

[proteus_lives]

23. Teddy was the man.

Bully!

[Jim Sagle]

6. Truman, mostly. JFK, basically. LBJ, except for that unfortunate incident in SW Asia.

[BrklynLiberal]

12. Isn't it sort of sad that for all the good things that LBJ accomplished, he will be forever

remembered for "that unfortunate incident in SW Asia"?

Wikipedia..
he did make advances in the "War on Poverty" and the "Great Society". The Civil Rights Act of 1964, Project Head Start, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Medicare and Medicaid and his efforts in support of space exploration are noteworthy.


LBJ appointed the first African-American to the Supreme Court...Thurgood Marshall.

[EFerrari]

66. That fact haunted him in his last years according to Kearns Goodwin.

Sad.

[BrklynLiberal]

87. According to tapes that were released recently , he truly agonized over the decision to

escalate in VietNam.

[EFerrari]

88. Robert Caro's stuff on Johnson in the CSPAN archives

is really interesting. I enjoy him because he keeps the hagiography to a reasonable minimum and is just as interested in the darker side of LBJ. And it's not about Caro as Kearns Goodwin seems to be about herself sometimes. :hi:

[napi21]

7. I'm not sure what your interpretation of a strong progressive is,

but if my guess is right, I think it would be impossible to have one today.

It seems to me your best bet would be to try to get strong progressives elected to Congress. That's where things actually happen, and that's where all the damage Shrub did actually took place. Remember, the Pubs al stuck together to vote for the insane conservative bills. Even the damn drug bill got passed...although it took a lot of bribes and threats to get there.

Think about it. Obama could demand all kinds of progrressive things but if he can't get 60 votes, TS!

[NYC Liberal]

8. Ask 50 self-identified liberals and they'll all say the others aren't

"real liberals." Honestly, I get tired of these labels. They try to put people in boxes into which they don't fit. Nobody can be a "true" liberal (or conservative or anything else) because there are so many issues to have a stance on, and then varying degrees of possibilities for support or opposition to them.

Bob is strongly pro-choice, but also against gay marriage. Liberal for being pro-choice? Right-winger for being against gay marriage?
Tom is a pacifist, but also has anti-union views. Liberal for being a pacifist or right-winger for being anti-union?

In both cases the "liberal" would probably say Bob and Tom are right-wingers for being against gay marriage and anti-union. The "conservative" would call them liberals for being pro-choice and a pacifist.

Those are just two very simple examples. Now take them and add in all the hundreds of other different issues out there and all the different views one might have on each, and it's not so simple.

[tblue]

38. True, but I'd consider certain individuals unquestionably liberal.

If that description involves too many exceptions or caveats or compromises, then I wouldn't consider them liberal. Maybe it is just a matter of degrees but, at a certain point, if you don't do what liberals would do, you're not a liberal. I'm not looking for purity. I'll allow for discretion on some issues. I'm looking for a generally liberal stance on virtually every issue. I can find that in certain members of Congress, but I have yet to see it in the White House

[NYC Liberal]

43. There's a reason for that.

Simply that members of Congress are elected by a much smaller group of people (as low as 30,000). Presidents are elected by a number in the hundreds of millions, and so a president cannot possibly be totally liberal or totally conservative. And also, it's not clear on every issue what a "liberal" would do, especially when it comes to specifics. Most would probably include being pro-choice in the definition of "liberal," but what about specific issues like parental notification for minors, etc.

[HuckleB]

51. +1

[CTyankee]

10. Ya see! The answer is NO! We're liberals...

I mean, really, what do you expect, lock step unanimity?

[David__77]

14. Liberals, yes; progressives, no.

Woodrow Wilson was a pure liberal. But I know what you mean - "liberal" in the American sense of "left-wing." In that sense, FDR was the closest thing. Too bad Mondale lost.

[anonymous171]

15. Wilson was a progressive, not a liberal.

And like most progressives, he was a fucking elitist warmongering weak kneed piece of shit. God damn he was a terrible president.

[valerief]

17. Our presidents don't want everyone to play well in the sandbox. They

want to let a few bullies kick sand in our faces and take our pails and shovels.

[laughingliberal]

21. The best analogy...maybe ever...of the current socio-economic system in America today nt

[valerief]

22. I'd bow but I need to get the grit out of my eyes. Damn, now they're hitting me with the pails!

[Better Believe It]

18. We're had a radical Republican President.

Abraham Lincoln.

The slave and plantation owners certainly considered him to be a radical.

[greennina]

30. But Lincoln was a Repuke so your argument is invalid.

Seriously, you're posting in support of the GOP?

[anonymous171]

31. He was actually quite pro-labor

Most republicans were at that point. They were against slavery because it was harming Freed Labor.

[JVS]

39. The current partisan orientation is a legacy of FDR. I feel no connection to the Democratic...

party of Lincoln's era and other out of date times. For example, Woodrow Wilson can kiss my ass.

[Skittles]

24. aw fuck no

and Obama isn't even CLOSE to being a liberal

[ChairmanAgnostic]

26. Nixon

EPA, Clean Water, Clean Air, SALT, China. . .

[prolesunited]

27. No

And if you thought Obama was a liberal, you were listening to too much MSM and didn't really look at his platform. It was all out there. He wasn't trying to fool anyone into believing he was a liberal.

I knew that. I still campaigned and voted for him and I'm not sorry. Name me a *viable* candidate that we would have gotten something different from.

[Bigmack]

28. Teddy Roosevelt was a Progressive...

Repub, but a Progressive nontheless. I've always been unhappy with his warlike nature, but domestically he was a jewel. When I saw a picture of Bush with a painting of TR behind him, I nearly puked. TR walked the walk. Bush could neither walk nor talk.
- - - - - -
Pure Food and Drug Act and enforcement. Sherman Act enforcement, Trust Busting thru jawboning. National Parks. Nobel Peace Prize. First president to have a black man in the White House, first president to fly in an airplane, etc etc.

"To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public."

"Viewed purely in the abstract, I think there can be no question that women should have equal rights with men."

""There can be no greater issue than that of conservation in this country."

"This country will not be a permanently good place for any of us to live in unless we make it a reasonably good place for all of us to live in."

"No man is above the law and no man is below it....."

"This country has nothing to fear from the crooked man who fails. We put him in jail. It is the crooked man who succeeds who is a threat to this country."

[madrchsod]

36. with the exception of reagan and little bush

every president since fdr has been a centrist. the difference is which way they are "leaning"

....cue cream`s "politician"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pgjZrqmDEPM&feature=related

[JVS]

40. Lincoln.

And before people chime in with the "His goals were not originally so liberal", I'd like to point out that he realized the massive upheaval of the war justified a turn to radically transformative policies to correct the root causes of the crisis. A moderate would have patched things up in a way that re-created the follies.

[Juche]

41. I think Obama is a liberal progressive

He supported gay marriage and single payer before it was popular. And he seems extremely introspective and curious, so I'm going to assume despite his public image as a devout christian, he is a closeted agnostic.

However Obama hides his liberal side, which is sad.

I think LBJ and FDR were fairly liberal. They supported some liberal policies, and they were forceful enough to get them passed. It seems today that being a liberal in politics almost requires you to be weak and hide from it. I think this is Obama's problem. he is a 'modern liberal' in the sense that he supports egalitarianism, government intervention and equality but is afraid to stand up for them as forcefully as he needs to.

[Blue_In_AK]

46. I agree with that.

Obama doesn't seem to be governing necessarily in line with his core personal principles.

[tekisui]

47. He supported gay marriage? He doesn't now.

[tblue]

48. Didn't Obama say marriage is between a man and a woman?

I think he did, but I'll stand corrected if need be.

To your other point, I have no idea if Obama is agnostic and/or liberal deep in his soul. He may very well be, though I may never know for sure. But I guess I don't really care either way. What matters to me is what actions he takes, what he champions, who he fights for, and how hard he tries. And I would never vote for someone based on what I think is in his heart or even based solely on what he says. All that really matters is what the man does. "I don't pretend to have windows in men's souls." ~Queen Elizabeth I.

[Juche]

52. He supported gay marriage back in 1996

http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/0109/Obama_backed_samesex_marriage_in_1996.html

I favor legalizing same-sex marriages,and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages - Obama in 1996 when he was running for Illinois state senate.

My reference to Obama and agnosticism is that I think Obama is the kind of person who feels he has to hide his true beliefs and view to gain 'mainstream' acceptance. So behind the veneer of the president I'm sure he is far more liberal than he leads on.

He is progressive enough to support gay marriage and single payer before they were mainstream issues. He supported medicare for all in 2002 and gay marriage in 1996. And he probably supported them long before that.

My point is his actions and his beliefs do not seem to match. He seems to hide his progressive side.

[tblue]

81. I don't know which is worse: defying your own liberal principles or not having them

to begin with. That's a very sad statement about Obama.

[Starry Messenger]

86. So perhaps he truly believes that we shouldn't double down in Afghanistan

He's just doing it to gain mainstream acceptance. I'm sure the Afghans will be pleased to know this.

[anonymous171]

49. In the 1930s Obama would be a republican. nt

[Lorien]

59. In the 1980s he would be too. nt

[Lorien]

58. Deeds not words

and by his deeds he's far from being anything like a "Liberal Progressive".

[Juche]

80. I agree

My point was I think he believes in liberal and progressive values, but hides them in his behavior.

[phasma ex machina]

42. Searching 1800s era Democratic presidents offers the best shot at finding a true liberal. nt

[Historic NY]

50. Define Liberal...then Define Democrat..,,now progressive.

Whats the total agenda package, your looking for. I don't expect a politician to "be ends all to be all".

[anonymous171]

53. Progressives were early liberals. They were middle class reformers

Not radicals. Teddy Roosevelt and Herbert Hoover were both progressives. FDR is the only true liberal to ever have existed.

[MellowDem]

54. You consider FDR a liberal president?

A war-monger who put Americans into detention camps because of their ethnicity? Or perhaps a weakling who compromised on issues of racial equality and ignored human atrocities in typical isolationist manner?

FDR was a liberal for his time. So is Obama. But they are both rational progressives who are working within the system for real change. If Obama could, he would have national healthcare, gay marriage, etc. etc. But he is acting within the constraints of the government, and the constraints are many in the US.

[anonymous171]

55. So self-defense now qualifies as warmongering? LOL

If FDR were running today he would still be considered a liberal. Obama, however, would have been considered a republican if he were running for president back in the 30s.

[MellowDem]

56. You betcha...

Remember 9/11? But now Obama is a warmonger himself, and it's just self-defense!

Obama would not have been considered a Republican, and he likely would have been able to govern more to the left due to the fact that the nation was further to the left back then in some respects (and much further to the right in others).

[anonymous171]

60. The Empire of Japan and Germany both declared war on us

Japan even engaged in a preemptive strike! Did the nation of Afghanistan declare war on America? Did Iraq? Read up on Hoover's beliefs and policies and you will see an eerie resemblance to Obama's own proposals. For example, compare Hoover's "Dole for Millionaires" to Obama's bailout.

Also if you are trying to imply that FDR allowed the attack on Pearl Harbor to happen then you are being very unintelligent and should stop posting.

[MellowDem]

67. Isn't that just semantics?

Al-Quada engaged in a "pre-emptive strike" as well. Obama didn't agree with going into Iraq. But he did in Afghanistan because that's where Al-Quada was based. Declarations of war are formal bullshit that no one cares about anymore, especially terrorist organizations.

As for Obama's bank bailouts, it's not really a "liberal/conservative" idea. Just look at the Teabag movement which is totally against the bank bailouts. Indeed, federal intervention in the banking system could definitely be seen as quite "liberal", considering the rules bailed out banks had to follow. In many ways, FDR prolonged the depression with his policies. Meanwhile, the much maligned bank bailouts have resulted in many banks repaying their government loans and having the economy start to turn around from the brink of collapse to a full-on recovery.

[anonymous171]

71. So, if the Minutemen staged a terrorist attack in Mexico,

you would be fine with the Mexican government invading and laying waste to the west coast in order to smoke 'em out?

The bailout was a conservative approach and was used (to no avail) by Hoover back in the day as well. If you really think that FDR prolonged the depression than you really should just go out and re-register as a republican. Seriously.

[MellowDem]

74. It's a poor analogy...

but yes, if American terrorists killed some 3,000 Mexicans in Mexico City that we openly knew about and continued to let operate within our borders, and the Mexicans had the means to, I'm guessing they would try to "smoke em out".

Hoover didn't really bail out banks. Indeed, the whole problem was that so many banks failed that led to the economic and financial collapse and the Great Depression. You might want to get your facts straight on this. Indeed, Hoover pushed for wage freezes and labor friendly practices in an effort to help end the depression, things which would be considered quite socialist today. And FDR generally just upped the ante in this area. They can't really be blamed considering they didn't know back then what we know today about economics. The whole point of the bank bailouts was to keep the money supply flowing and allow banks to keep on lending, something which is vital to any modern economy.

[anonymous171]

76. I said his response was similiar to Obama's, not that it was exactly the same

Like Obama, Hoover did everything short of actual government intervention to save the economy. And it didn't work. By the way, there are other ways to keep the money flowing that don't involve corporate welfare. Banks are indeed vital to any modern capitalist economy, but they shouldn't be treated with an ounce of respect or trust. Giving them "loans" (free money) was a bad idea.

[MellowDem]

77. I agree in some respects...

that there should have been more "strings" attached to the loans, and more overall government oversight. But I have a feeling Obama will be getting to a bill (after health care and cap-and-trade) for more government regulation of the banking industry, especially to deal with the new realities of modern banking.

As has been said before, the problem was that the banks were too big to fail, which of course means that they had to be bailed out or else the consequences would have been severe. This means no consequences for banks that are messing things up, provided they are huge banks, though that wasn't entirely the case with bailed out banks. And it is something Obama will be addressing so it can't happen again I do believe.

[anonymous171]

79. We shall see. nt

[Hippo_Tron]

65. Obama wouldn't be allowed to vote in many states in the 1930's

[MellowDem]

68. Exactly...

well, he would officially, but unofficially... let's just say he wouldn't be considered a Republican and that he is to the left of FDR in many, many ways.

[anonymous171]

72. So? Neither would Michael Steele.

I don't see your point.

[Hippo_Tron]

73. That while Obama's stimulus plan would be considered Republican in an age of 25% unemployment

FDR would be considered a reactionary nutjob on civil rights in 2009. The circumstances under which they govern are extremely different which accounts for the differences in their policies, not just that FDR was some liberal hero and Obama just loves corporations. The scope and scale of poverty in 1933 is not even close to comparable to what it is in 2009. People are suffering but not like they were back then. Thus the political will for massive New Deal jobs programs does not exist among the masses like it did back then.

[anonymous171]

78. Political will is irrelevant. Someone has to stand up to the economic elitists

Someone has to be brave enough to wield the coercive power of the state against them. If not Obama than someone else. But eventually, someone wil have to take a stand. The lack of political will is trumped by political necessity. The masses will rally in support of whoever can provide them with jobs and healthcare. FDR did not solve all of their problems, yet they still voted for him because they knew he was on their side. If Obama did the same thing, he would win in a landslide. Unfortunately, he is a coward.

[The Midway Rebel]

61. FDR was considered a traitor to his own class.

FWIW


...need more traitors like that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

63. No, and not even FDR

FDR was very pragmatic and the New Deal was actually somewhat to the center of the era.

[alarimer]

64. probably not. FDR was probably the closest.

That asshole Bill Clinton, with all his DLC and triangulation ruined the Democratic Party. "welfare reform" and Nafta are all Republican policies in nature, if not in fact.

[ipaint]

69. No, not even close.

I'm 53. For me a liberal is in the category of Tommy Douglas in Canada.

[Hippo_Tron]

70. No, they've all been pragmatic politicians trying to win the next election

What was politically pragmatic in the 1930's, 1940's, 1950's, and 1960's, and 2000's is all completely different.

A better question is "Has the United States ever had a truly left wing ruling coalition?" The answer is no, we have not. We've flirted with some left of center policies in different areas at different times but never have our elected leaders been truly left wing or socialist.

[Rhiannon12866]

75. IMHO, JFK was the closest, but he was a product of his time. n/t

[tblue]

82. On civil rights, he wasn't especially liberal until pushed by Bobby and

the s#\+ hit the fan on the tv so he felt he had to act.

[anonymous171]

84. He was also not very liberal on the economy. nt

[Rhiannon12866]

85. That's a good point. Bobby was more of a true liberal and he did have a big influence.

I've often wondered what this country would be like today if he had survived and won in '68. :-(

[elana i am]

83. no. and how on earth did you convince yourself that

obama was a liberal?

[Echo In Light]

89. Of course not - that would be counterproductive to dominant US institutions