This line: “Eventually all the histories of struggle that began in the early 20th Century—some of which scarcely understood themselves in those terms at the start—flowed into the Democratic coalition, became its lifeblood.”
Who do you have in mind as the struggles “which scarcely understood themselves in those terms”?
I think for one that by the time the 20th Century "respectable" middle class was a consistent patron of the expansion of public goods, it was increasingly distant from the battle to establish that priority in the first place. In other cases, social tensions at the site of liberal-progressive value-making, as in interwar social reform, were forgotten, both between urban white middle-class reformers (many of them women) and the people they wanted to work the project of reform upon (promoting thrift, temperance, etc.) By the time the idea of Keynesian management of the economy was normalized, for a brief time at least technocrats forgot what it replaced and ignored the rise of "Austrian" hostility. By the time unions achieved their widest establishment and greatest successes in securing good wages and benefits, they started to forget the ferocity of the battle to win the basic right to unionize. So it was both "struggles" that weren't understood as such by at least one group pursuing civic virtue or it was groups that were the beneficiaries of previous struggles who started to lose sight of how hard it had been to win, and what they'd needed to do in order to secure what they had. All of which--coming in the next few installments--meant that progressive-liberal ideas about a virtuous politics started to be divorced from the political conditions that had established those ideas.
The League for Independent Political Action (LIPA) is usually laughed off as New York elites mucking about in electoral politics they didn't understand, with John Dewey's failure to recruit progressive senator George Norris as exhibit #1. However, LIPA brings together many of the threads you're tracing and, like TR's square deal, is a forerunner to the coalition you sketch. As you say, Democrat's did not share LIPA's commitments to racial justice until suddenly they did, but the progressive-liberal ideas expressed by LIPA in 1932 are pretty much the values of 1980s technocratically minded progressive-liberals.
I heard your warning about the temptation to pick an iconic moment, but can't resist. The early 1930s have always felt to me like a moment of wide-open political promise. Passing the New Deal legislation, establishing norms and structures around 12+ years of schooling, expanding markets in cultural consumption, and putting in place the military-industrial complex are four of the stories "that start in different places, go in different directions, and have lasted for different durations." I think they each played an important role in creating the coalition you describe.
I'm looking forward to your account of how we reached the terminal point.
Gorgeous essay.
This line: “Eventually all the histories of struggle that began in the early 20th Century—some of which scarcely understood themselves in those terms at the start—flowed into the Democratic coalition, became its lifeblood.”
Who do you have in mind as the struggles “which scarcely understood themselves in those terms”?
I think for one that by the time the 20th Century "respectable" middle class was a consistent patron of the expansion of public goods, it was increasingly distant from the battle to establish that priority in the first place. In other cases, social tensions at the site of liberal-progressive value-making, as in interwar social reform, were forgotten, both between urban white middle-class reformers (many of them women) and the people they wanted to work the project of reform upon (promoting thrift, temperance, etc.) By the time the idea of Keynesian management of the economy was normalized, for a brief time at least technocrats forgot what it replaced and ignored the rise of "Austrian" hostility. By the time unions achieved their widest establishment and greatest successes in securing good wages and benefits, they started to forget the ferocity of the battle to win the basic right to unionize. So it was both "struggles" that weren't understood as such by at least one group pursuing civic virtue or it was groups that were the beneficiaries of previous struggles who started to lose sight of how hard it had been to win, and what they'd needed to do in order to secure what they had. All of which--coming in the next few installments--meant that progressive-liberal ideas about a virtuous politics started to be divorced from the political conditions that had established those ideas.
Right. Thanks for the clarifying reply.
The League for Independent Political Action (LIPA) is usually laughed off as New York elites mucking about in electoral politics they didn't understand, with John Dewey's failure to recruit progressive senator George Norris as exhibit #1. However, LIPA brings together many of the threads you're tracing and, like TR's square deal, is a forerunner to the coalition you sketch. As you say, Democrat's did not share LIPA's commitments to racial justice until suddenly they did, but the progressive-liberal ideas expressed by LIPA in 1932 are pretty much the values of 1980s technocratically minded progressive-liberals.
I heard your warning about the temptation to pick an iconic moment, but can't resist. The early 1930s have always felt to me like a moment of wide-open political promise. Passing the New Deal legislation, establishing norms and structures around 12+ years of schooling, expanding markets in cultural consumption, and putting in place the military-industrial complex are four of the stories "that start in different places, go in different directions, and have lasted for different durations." I think they each played an important role in creating the coalition you describe.
I'm looking forward to your account of how we reached the terminal point.