All historians writing about the United States in the 1970s address, in some way, liberalism's decline. Jeffrey Bloodworth's Losing the Center focuses solely on this decline and offers a single cause: “New Politics” liberals ignored traditional New Deal coalition voters and pandered instead to elites and social movement activists. Although he is mostly silent on the shifting political allegiances of white Southerners, Bloodworth laments Democratic Party leaders' abandonment of white, mostly working-class, voters, many of who lived in Rust Belt cities or inner suburbs. Liberals dismissed these voters' cultural conservatism and robust Cold War stance. Consequently, Democratic candidates lost elections. The emerging conservative movement framed national political discourse.
What Democrats needed, Bloodworth argues, was “a centrist, yet liberal, middle way between the New Politics and the Reagan Revolution” (227). What they delivered instead were outsized welfare programs and statist solutions; they left behind what Bloodworth calls “opportunity liberalism.” This brand of liberalism, dominant in the 1940s and 1950s, privileged individual initiatives and sensible, targeted government programs to promote economic growth and assist the most needy. The key moment in this transformation, he contends, came in the late 1960s, when New Politics liberals undertook ham-handed reforms to increase the importance of state primaries and open up delegate selection processes to the national presidential nominating conventions. When put into effect during the 1972 presidential campaign of George McGovern, this understandable goal of democratizing the Party marginalized party stalwarts, especially labor leaders and big city politicians. Party regulars, disgusted by their marginalization and the appearance of counterculture youth within their ranks, either stayed home that year, or cast their vote for Republican Richard Nixon.
Although many readers will accept the broad outline of this familiar narrative, Bloodworth's analysis will leave them questioning his one-dimensional approach to the complex and shifting political and economic terrain of the period. In key places in the book it is difficult to identify with precision what constitutes the “middle.” Bloodworth writes approvingly, for example, of the Democratic Leadership Council as a moderate alternative to New Politics liberals. Many of its leading figures (including Bill Clinton), however, began their political lives in the McGovern campaign. Bloodworth concedes that the “lines between centrist and New Politics liberalism remained hazy and difficult to discern” (245). Even his characterization of postwar “opportunity liberalism” is inaccurate, as there was a strain of social democratic thought that persisted into the 1970s in the form of full employment legislation, urban renewal, and industrial policy. This progressive perspective survives today.
For all of his concern about the lost “middle,” he pays little attention to these voters. Except for a perfunctory discussion of disaffected white Democratic voters, Bloodworth does not consider such phenomena as split ticket voting or regional voting patterns. In fact, it was not altogether clear in the 1970s that liberalism was in retreat. To this point, his analysis might have benefited from consulting the emerging literature on the history of the 1970s. These books include Judith Stein's on the economy and government policy, Jefferson Cowie's on workplace militancy and class-consciousness, and Laura Kalman's on law and politics. In addition to these works, there is a growing literature on diverse topics such as second-wave feminism, affirmative action, busing, religion, and the New Right. These works underscore the point that the meaning of liberalism was unsettled throughout “the Long 1970s.”
Losing the Center is more rewarding for its many chapters on the influence of important liberals who have hitherto received little scholarly attention. These include Henry “Scoop” Jackson, Bella Abzug, Morris Udall, and Dave McCurdy. Although the biographical details tend to crowd out these politicians' larger significance, Bloodworth fleshes out how these under-studied individuals affected the shape and character of modern liberalism. Democratic Party reformer Donald Peterson, for example, served as a bridge between the old Midwestern “peace progressives” and the push by young reformers in the 1960s and 1970s. Louisiana Congresswoman Lindy Boggs' inclusion offers a crucial, although too sketchy examination into the gendered nature of politics. Boggs took office on the death of her husband, House of Representatives Majority Leader Hale Boggs, in 1972. Subsequently, she was elected to office eight times by fashioning herself as what Bloodworth describes as a sensible, moderate feminist Democratic. He credits Boggs for generating “relentless charm to make a woman's power more palatable” (205). Unfortunately, Bloodworth notes, her pro-life stance rendered her unacceptable to many liberals.
Despite offering an oversimplified argument, Jeffrey Bloodworth should be applauded for this biographical approach, and for extending the scope of his work into the still under-studied 1980s. His work should spur other scholars to continue the study of lesser know liberal figures. They must, however, resist the easy categorizations that plague Losing the Center.
