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Full Description
What happened to the Democratic Party after the 1960s? In many political histories, the McGovern defeat of 1972 announced the party's decline—and the conservative movement's ascent. What the conventional narrative neglects, Patrick Andelic submits, is the role of Congress in the party's, and the nation's, political fortunes. In Donkey Work, Andelic looks at Congress from 1974 to 1994 as the Democratic Party's stronghold and explores how this twenty-year tenure boosted and undermined the party's response to the conservative challenge.If post-1960s America belongs to the conservative movement, Andelic asks, how do we account for the failure of so much of the conservative agenda—especially the shrinking of the federal government? Examining the Democratic Party's unusual durability in Congress after 1974, Donkey Work disrupts the narrative of inexorable liberal decline since the 1970s and reveals the ways in which liberalism and conservatism actually developed in tandem. The book traces the evolution of ideologies within the Democratic Party, particularly the emergence of "neoliberalism," suggesting that this political philosophy was as much an anticipation of America's "right turn" as a reaction to it; as factions vied for control of the party, Congress itself both strengthened and weakened liberal resistance to the conservative movement.
By putting the focus on Congress and legislative politics, in contrast to the "presidential synthesis" that dominates US political history, Andelic's book offers a new, deeply informed perspective on two turbulent decades of American politics—a perspective that alters and expands our understanding of how we arrived at our present political moment.
Contents
AcknowledgmentsIntroductions
1. "We Came Here to Take the Bastille": The Midterm Elections of 1974 and the Watergate Babies
2. "The Last Election Means the Buck Stops Here": The Democratic Congress Struggle with Ford, 1975-1976
3. Peanuts: The Early Frustrations of the Carter Years, 1976-1978
4. Persona Non Carter: The Democratic Party Searches for an Alternative, 1978-1980
5. Marauders at the Gates: The Democratic Congress Defends the New Deal State, 1980-1984
6. "Reaganism with a Human Face"?: The Rise of the Neoliberals, 1980-1992
Epilogue. 1994: The End of the Permanent Democratic Congress
Notes
Bibliographic
Index
