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mazzarro
mazzarro's Journal
mazzarro's Journal
January 1, 2017
How Democrats Killed Their Populist Soul
In the 1970s, a new wave of post-Watergate liberals stopped fighting monopoly power. The result is an increasingly dangerous political system.
It was January 1975, and the Watergate Babies had arrived in Washington looking for blood. The Watergate Babiesas the recently elected Democratic congressmen were knownwere young, idealistic liberals who had been swept into office on a promise to clean up government, end the war in Vietnam, and rid the nations capital of the kind of corruption and dirty politics the Nixon White House had wrought. Richard Nixon himself had resigned just a few months earlier in August. But the Watergate Babies didnt just campaign against Nixon; they took on the Democratic establishment, too. Newly elected Representative George Miller of California, then just 29 years old, announced, We came here to take the Bastille.
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Over the next 40 years, this Democratic generation fundamentally altered American politics. They restructured campaign finance, party nominations, government transparency, and congressional organization. They took on domestic violence, homophobia, discrimination against the disabled, and sexual harassment. They jettisoned many racially and culturally authoritarian traditions. They produced Bill Clintons presidency directly, and in many ways, they shaped President Barack Obamas.
The result today is a paradox. At the same time that the nation has achieved perhaps the most tolerant culture in U.S. history, the destruction of the anti-monopoly and anti-bank tradition in the Democratic Party has also cleared the way for the greatest concentration of economic power in a century. This is not what the Watergate Babies intended when they dethroned Patman as chairman of the Banking Committee. But it helped lead them down that path. The story of Patmans ousting is part of the larger story of how the Democratic Party helped to create todays shockingly disillusioned and sullen public, a large chunk of whom is now marching for Donald Trump
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