Have Democrats Lost Their Liberal Spirit?

By Bruce Miroff, University Press of Kansas
Posted on November 14, 2007, Printed on November 14, 2007
http://www.alternet.org/story/63470/

Intro written by Colin Greer: The following excerpt is from Bruce Miroff's book on the 1972 McGovern Presidential campaign, The Liberals' Moment. This is the first history of that epochal event in progressive politics. The book is rich in detail and its path takes us to the recognition that, for two or three generations, the leadership of the Democratic party and its guiding centrist message derives from politicos, DLC luminaries including Bill Clinton and John Podesta, who cut their teeth in the McGovern campaign and learned the wrong lessons from it.

In 1972 the American Left, -- and there was then a Left in America -- was destroyed in the same way the Right seemed to be destroyed in 1964. The Goldwater defeat was actually replicated on the Left by the McGovern defeat. The McGovern defeat was so devastating that professional politicians basically cut themselves off from the base of the people who make political life real at the local level and whose needs would push toward progressive policy if the public interest were a public priority.