The Road to Reagan

Most filing deadlines have passed. 

Biden could step aside (unlikely)

RFK Super Bowl

It is simply a 1960 JFK ad with RFK Jr's face:

Family members were not happy.

For Thursday, read Rosenfeld, ch. 8 and conclusion.

Review from last week:

Before the 1970s, tax cuts were not central to the GOP message.  In fact, Republicans opposed JFK's tax but proposal!

Oil shocks (1973 OPEC and 1979 Iran) begat inflation, which begat rising nominal property values and bracket creep, which begat Prop 13 (1978) and Kemp-Roth

"Of a sudden, the GOP has become a party of ideas."  -- Daniel Patrick Moynihan 1981

In the background: The "Welfare Shift"

Several different currents in the Democratic Party:

The Center

Reaction to McGovern's defeat

But the rightward shift in Congress was limited. Who were the "Watergate babies"?

Carter's center-right policies:

• Decontrol oil prices;
• Deregulate transportation
• Reform civil service.

The 1979 oil shock causes a recession, and the hostage crisis gives Carter a temporary bump but eventually brings down approval numbers.

On the progressive left:

"By the end of the decade, liberal calls abounded for the explicit emulation of conservative organizational innovations from the 1960s and 1970s" (Rosenfeld 248)

Democratic Social Organizing Committee (Rosenfeld 230-233) begets Democratic Socialists of America -- whose members include AOC.

But the problem was "elite, staff-dominated letterhead organizations" (250).

What was the role of UAW and other labor unions?

But the composition of organized labor is changing:

The Kennedy challenge (255-56).  Note dramatic change of tone between the beginning and the end.

New element of the Democratic coalition:  suburban liberals: still liberal on social policy but open to pro-market domestic policies.

1978: Gingrich and Clinton enter the scene