"Can Anyone Imagine FDR Uttering Such Words?"

"If in the 1980s, as Alan Ehrenhalt wrote, Democrats 'lost the agenda to President Reagan just as surely as Republicans lost it to Roosevelt in the 1930s,' part of the reason had to with their backing off of their vision of governance and public spending as positive goods. It was not just conservatives such as Reagan, but high-profile Democrats who, as Pat Buchanan wrote in 1983, maintained 'that the ideas of the New Deal do not apply to the 1980s.' In foreswearing the relevance of the New Deal tradition, Democrats made a fatal error. Not only did they underestimate the ways in which that tradition remained relevant. Just as importantly, they conceded that what Muskie called 'common sense criticism of government' meant suspicion of the basic functions of the state. The Democrats had good reason to examine and critique the liberal tradition, which brought them defeat in 1968 and 1972."

Lawrence B. Glickman at Boston Review criticizes 1970s Democrats who weakened "their connection to government as an enabler of liberty [and] helped normalize conservative political rhetoric."