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'Take Back Our Party' Chapter 1: Their Democratic Party [View all]
Last edited Sun Dec 15, 2019, 09:37 PM - Edit history (2)
by James KwakI have a poor memory of my own life, but I remember where I was when Bill Clinton was elected president: Kroeber Hall, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, in the evening of November 3, 1992. A friend and I were listening to the radio on a boombox when we heard the news. The nightmare of the Reagan-Bush years was over. We hugged. The Democrats were back in power.
Not surprisingly, I learned my politics from my parents. They came to the United States from South Korea, as they say, in search of a better life. My father arrived in San Francisco in 1953 on a freight ship that returned to America after delivering food to GIs fighting the Korean War. He then took a train and a bus across the country, arriving at Wesleyan College two months after the semester started (never having received the letter from Wesleyan telling him it was too late to come). My mother came nine years later to study at the University of Michigan. From them I learned that the Democrats were the party of workers, unions, and the poor, while the Republicans were the party of business and the rich.
The archetypal Democratic hero at the time was Franklin Roosevelt, the president of the New Deal, which included massive public works projects to fight unemployment, comprehensive regulation of the financial system, and the creation of Social Security. In 1944, he called for a “second Bill of Rights,” which would guarantee all Americans a job, basic material necessities, housing, health care, and an education—but which never materialized. His successor, Harry Truman, proposed a universal, single-payer health care program. And in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war” on poverty, pushing forward a legislative agenda that included Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and federal subsidies for schools with poor children. That was what the Democratic brand still meant in the 1970s, when I was a child.
At that moment, however, the legacy of the New Deal was in danger, weakened by the Vietnam War and economic stagnation. With a growing backlash against regulation, high taxes, and the civil rights movement, the modern American conservative movement—which had languished in obscurity as recently as the 1950s—was poised to take over the Republican Party and then the country.
Not surprisingly, I learned my politics from my parents. They came to the United States from South Korea, as they say, in search of a better life. My father arrived in San Francisco in 1953 on a freight ship that returned to America after delivering food to GIs fighting the Korean War. He then took a train and a bus across the country, arriving at Wesleyan College two months after the semester started (never having received the letter from Wesleyan telling him it was too late to come). My mother came nine years later to study at the University of Michigan. From them I learned that the Democrats were the party of workers, unions, and the poor, while the Republicans were the party of business and the rich.
The archetypal Democratic hero at the time was Franklin Roosevelt, the president of the New Deal, which included massive public works projects to fight unemployment, comprehensive regulation of the financial system, and the creation of Social Security. In 1944, he called for a “second Bill of Rights,” which would guarantee all Americans a job, basic material necessities, housing, health care, and an education—but which never materialized. His successor, Harry Truman, proposed a universal, single-payer health care program. And in 1964, President Lyndon Johnson declared “unconditional war” on poverty, pushing forward a legislative agenda that included Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and federal subsidies for schools with poor children. That was what the Democratic brand still meant in the 1970s, when I was a child.
At that moment, however, the legacy of the New Deal was in danger, weakened by the Vietnam War and economic stagnation. With a growing backlash against regulation, high taxes, and the civil rights movement, the modern American conservative movement—which had languished in obscurity as recently as the 1950s—was poised to take over the Republican Party and then the country.
Read more: https://prospect.org/takebackourparty/chapter-1-their-democratic-party/
(American Prospect)
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