Reply #21: LBJ's party, as was FDR's and Truman's and JFK's...

[Davis_X_Machina]

...was one-third hateful Dixiecrats who were reliable votes for the Cold War, or the war in Vietnam, but not much else. There were moderate, and even liberal, Republicans in those days -- Hatfield, Javits, Chaffee, Brooke -- you could do business with. That species has gone extinct.

It fought the Cold War with no respect for the Constitution, by throwing money and lies at it with reckless abandon, every bit as bad in both regards as the GOP.

It drew its power in part from big city machines that were corrupt, in many cases racist, and profoundly anti-small-d democratic -- like the first Mayor Daley.

It had wafflers, and trimmers and pols with one wet finger up to sense the direction of the prevailing wind, like Humphrey on Vietnam.

It had massive egos getting in the way of good policy, like Ted Kennedy on health care.

It wasn't an unmixed bed of roses. There was no golden age -- unless constructed after the fact by the selective exercise of memory.

And the same thing will be true thirty or sixty years from now.

The present will be painted by Democrats of the future as a golden age, and people will ask "What happened to real Democrats, like they had back in Clinton's day, or in Obama's?"