This book traces the troubled history of American liberalism between the tumultuous 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and Bill Clinton's election to the White House. In those years, liberals effectively conceded the political center to conservatives and wandered the political wilderness. For decades, scholars have examined how conservatives captured the American electorate during this time. This book, however, looks at why and how liberals sowed the seeds of their own creed's demise. Through examining a sundry array of grassroots activists and officeholders, from big city mayors to Congresswo ... More

This book traces the troubled history of American liberalism between the tumultuous 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention and Bill Clinton's election to the White House. In those years, liberals effectively conceded the political center to conservatives and wandered the political wilderness. For decades, scholars have examined how conservatives captured the American electorate during this time. This book, however, looks at why and how liberals sowed the seeds of their own creed's demise. Through examining a sundry array of grassroots activists and officeholders, from big city mayors to Congresswomen and Senators, the book details the Democratic coalition in all of its diversity. Unlike the rest of the literature that sees liberals as unwitting victims of cunning conservatives, this book lays the blame for liberalism's demise where it belongs—on liberals themselves. Understandably outraged by the Vietnam War and the resistance to the Civil Rights Movement, New Politics activists organized and took over the Democratic Party. Rejecting the Democratic Party's Vital Center liberalism, New Politics liberals crafted a new set of policies for the 1970s. Unfortunately for them, voters consistently rejected New Politics liberalism and turned instead to conservative politicians and eventually Ronald Reagan. This book traces liberalism slow demise during the 1970s and 1980s and the gradual re-emergence of centrist liberalism that eventually brought Bill Clinton to the White House.