Part of the reason for the "liberal" failure cited, is that Kevin Drum or Matt Y aren't really liberals.

A distressing number of otherwise intelligent human beings began turning a blind eye to the econmic agenda items you list when they appeared to produce improvements in stock portfolios. In my book, you stop being "liberal" when you stop caring when events that benefit you harm others living around you. Liberality is the spirit of generosity that balances self-interest with compassion for others.

Many of the things you cite were actually instituted by dem Presidents, Clinton(media consolodation, anti-trust laws gutted) and Carter(deregulation in the airline industry) this was an outrageous failure by these two Presidents to stand up to the radical right on these issues. IIRC many democratic politicians begged Clinton not to sign some of the legislation, but he did it anyway.

Scylla's right.

The movement of the retirement benefits of the white-collar class (Kevin,Matt,yours truly) from pensions to the stock market is an understudied phenomonen in the demise of American liberalism.

It changed educated people from an atitude of "what direction is this country actually going and is it truly what we want" to "ohmygod I'll make any pact with the Devil I have to just so the DOW and my home value keeps climbing."

The irony is the economic steriods of neo-liberalism seem likely, like real steroids, to lead to worse results in the long (and, things are so fucked up I can probably even say middle) term for everybody but the very top.

Which, wonderful successes that we are, still does not and is very unlikely to ever include Kevin, Matt, and Yours Truly.

As Nathan knows, I'm a considerable supporter of increased union influence. I'm not up to his level, of course, but still.

Nathan's general point is well taken, I think, but I'd still argue that the main conservative agenda points haven't gotten much traction. After all, most liberals have never really been anti-business (and shouldn't be), we just want sufficient regulation to keep corporations from taking over the country. Deregulation in some areas is quite a good thing, in others it's a catastrophe. It's the nature of the regulation that determines if it's progressive or not, not the fact of regulation itself.

But Kevin-- the point is that it's the "bad" deregulation that has won out, not the good, in the last thirty years.

The complete corporate meltdown of Enron, WorldCom et. al. is just one big example, which involved the transfer of literally billions, even trillions of dollars (at the high end of estimates) of money from the general public to corporate insiders.

The basic rise in economic inequality in the last few decades cannot be considered anything other than a defeat for progressive forces.

Deregulate worker's rights first, please.
The US has the lowest rate of worker participation of any industrial democracy.
Why?
You've seen this report from Human Rights Watch:
http://www.hrw.org/reports/2000/uslabor/

Nathan,

I think you hit the nail on the head by identifying which faction of the GOP has won -- not the old-fashioned, main street "cloth coat" Republicans who want smaller government, and not even the Christian right. The victors so far are corporate interests, whose only significant setbacks in the last 20 years that I remember are a few minimum wage hikes ("jobkiller jobkiller jobkiller!!" I hear the Chamber of Commerce scream) and the ADA and FMLA. Other than that, they've deregulated, cut taxes, and beaten back other attempts at progress.

This, incidentally, is why the Nader campaign struck such a nerve in 2000. Remember his flabbiness on abortion? That wasn't his supporters' issue, cause we haven't lost Roe v. Wade yet. But for those on the Left who are primarily concerned about corporate hegemony, we've been on the steep part of the slippery slope for decades now -- and the Dems have helped push us down, too, though not as fast as the GOP.

Blast. Typepad double-pinged you. Well, if you get around to it, delete the first ping.

Thanks.

Paperwight

You're a wise man, Brother Newman

If you want to examine the effects of conservatism you should compare the situation 1981, when Reagan took office, to today. Public policies became more liberal during the late 60's and 70's, but the conservatives under Reagan reversed that trend.

good site

thanks

nice site