Here is what I know, what I believe and what I am not afraid of...

[Ninga]

Lyndon Bains Johnson was the last liberal to occupy the White House.
Some 45 years ago. A majority of middle class families could sustain their households with one income.
Since that time, only the very rich have had growth and prospered, and middle class households struggle even with two incomes.
Nixon/Ford 2 terms, Reagan 2 terms, Bush I one term, Bush II 2 terms, trumplethinskin 3 years.

31 of the last 45 years dominated by ultra conservative policies.

Johnson designed the Great Society Programs
-The Voting Rights Act
-Medicare/Medicaid
-public broadcasting
-aid to education
-the arts
-War on Proverty (helped millions of Americans rise above poverty.
-banned racial discrimination in public facilities
-interstate commerce
-Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965

The middle class and working poor have been kicked to the curb and voters have been worked over by messages of caution and warning that only middle of the road candidates (only said about Democrats by the way) can win.
It’s not voters we need to reach out to, it’s non voters. We need to work hard in that effort.

When someone asks me who I like for President I repeat the words of Sen John Glenn when he was asked the same question.
Examine your values and align your self with the candidate that reflects those values and then work hard for their victory.

For goodnesses sake DO NOT STICK YOUR FINGER IN THE WIND to try and guess which candidate might appeal to
others. That is just playing into the hands of the genius conservatives that have made sure that message is repeated every election cycle. Our win loss record proves their propaganda has worked.

I am not afraid of progressive candidates. It’s long past time.

[BannonsLiver]

1. Okay.

[empedocles]

2. LBJ was a hard-nosed pragmatist who worked with powerful, Southern Chairmen,

to accomplish all those things. All that was won in the middle of the electorate.

LBJ's opponents were the Goldwater trogs on the right, and the righteous leftists on the left.

[Good to see LBJ's achievements listed above though].

[Ninga]

4. LBJ including the "Southern" allies had courage of their convictions plus LBJ

read accurately the mood of the country and moved forward like lightening.

I forgot to list his environmental achievements. While you are correct re the political dynamic his accomplishments were and are still affecting many millions of Americans each day, in a positive way.

[Demsrule86]

3. I am afraid of losing and allowing more SCOTUS and other court picks...and the end of all health

care...very angry with both Warren and Sanders for attacking the ACA and promoting MfA which has no chance of passing while the ACA is in court...this gives the court a reason to find againstthe ACA ...this would be a death sentence to thousands if not not millions of Americans. This is the only health care we have ever had and are likely to have in the future. I am also afraid of Trump nuking someone...you can bet, I will choose the best candidate to take out Trump. and Biden is that candidate...the others are losing in Virginia for God's sakes.

[Ninga]

5. "There is nothing to fear but fear itself." Propaganda is the most mind bending affective tool.

I appreciate your concern but have no intellectual way of how to talk about it.

[Demsrule86]

9. If you say so...I am a simple woman...I just want a Democrat in the White House and I like Biden...

he was a good VP and can beat Trump.

[Thekaspervote]

7. Exactly... to tell voters that they will enact M4A is false hope. And voters that buy into it

Either don’t understand home their government works...or they are blinded by the rhetoric

[Hortensis]

6. LBJ was the last liberal? Interesting take. I'm a love-hate

admirer of LBJ, but I wouldn't describe him as reliably liberal in policy. Far from. He was too formed by the corrupt TX southern-Democrat (conservative) environment he'd been part of for so long.

He was egalitarian, though. I remember a story from Caro's Path to Power when Bobby Kennedy took a rare visit to TX and LBJ's housekeeper favored him with her political view on something while leading him back. Apparently unusual for Kennedy because he commented on LBJ's servant being opinionated when he came in. LBJ replied that that was the difference between the them, that Kennedys had servants and he had employees. Great start to the meeting.

Fwiw, I'm a lifelong liberal, both by personality and political ideology. I know what liberal is, and we are, and for over 100 years have been, a liberal dominated party, ever since liberals, most of the progressivism in the Republican-lead progressive movement, left the Republican Party which had become increasingly business-oriented and took back the Democratic label an influx of conservatives had taken over in the early 1800s. Liberals were dominant even before LBJ's Civil Rights Act of 1964 caused most conservative southern Dems to switch to the Yankee Republican party they'd hated. We've dominated even more strongly ever since: something like close to 200 out of the 235 members of the house right now and our entire top party leadership.

Yes, Jimmy Carter was something of an exception, economically a small-government Southern Democrat, but he was an aberration and doesn't prove your thesis. He managed to become president and provide Sanders a model by: Doing end run around his colleagues, who also all refused to support him, by selling himself directly to the voters as a populist reformer and his colleagues as all corrupt. By relying on small-donor fundraising because none of the committed liberal donors, who knew him/of him, would donate to him. In other words, Carter was not typical for Democratic presidents, but note that he was overall also fairly liberal, certainly very egalitarian, socially.

[Ninga]

8. I get it. However just a quick glance at his

accomplishments to benefit the quality of life for everyday Americans demonstrates he has no equal.

LBJ in my view was the “reach out and touch somebody” a million times over

[Demsrule86]

10. I will say one thing...the fact that Kennedy was assasinated gave LBJ...a chance to get stuff passed

that I doubt would have been possible had Kennedy not been murdered...it created a great deal of sympathy and made the policies more appealing. You have to consider the times and what they were like in any analysis and I think that is where yours is a bit weak but still very interesting.

[Hortensis]

11. He was a political master, but not to mistake his wonderful

achievements to be a measure of his commitment to his ideology, or to indicate lesser in others.

Johnson had Democratic SUPERMAJORITIES in both chambers of congress throughout his term. ! (Their achievements were a suggestion of just how much was not achieved by Carter, who had the same remarkable opportunity.) It would be as accurate to say that a Democratic-controlled legislative branch, the one that wrote, passed and funded the “reach out and touch somebody” legislative accomplishments, had a Democratic president who wouldn't block their legislation. But it was a team effort.

Plus, the parties were less ideologically divided in those days, and reaching agreements across the aisle with Republicans was far more possible, something Johnson, who spoke "Republican" and ground sausage very well, was excellent at. Senator Johnson made things happen.

Btw, as senate majority leader, Johnson's mastery tended to involve ruthlessly ramming what he wanted through with a lot of il-liberal, undemocratic, even unethical and illicit, techniques that have been copied by such ruthlessly people-betraying, authoritarian Republicans as Tom (The Hammer) DeLay and Moscow Mitch, but not liberal Democrats like Nancy Pelosi.

But I agree strongly with your admiration of the many achievements and advances during Johnson's single term (his legacy is far more than the dreadful one of Vietnam), just that they were not, and could not have been, done by any president on his own. And how many presidents have had supermajorities in both chambers? Johnson and Carter.