PJ Media

Mr. Piereson is his own worst enemy here. I quote a sentence from his most recent post, and then another passage from his opening post (my emphasis in the first):

“However, I do assert that Kennedy’s assassination was an important event in this process because the liberal leadership of the nation blamed it on bigotry, intolerance, and a national culture of violence — rather than as an event in the Cold War.”

“Kennedy understood that being tagged as a liberal was the kiss of death in national politics – and thus he was careful to position himself as a moderate or as a “pragmatist.” This aspect of Kennedy’s career conflicted with the posthumous myth that developed in the 1960s of JFK as a liberal idealist.”

John F. Kennedy was never a liberal even by the standards of the time, and Mr. Piereson properly notes that and the reason – liberals were losers.

But then he uses the term “liberal leadership of the nation” for the period of the Johnson administration. There was no such thing. There was Lyndon Johnson. He made the difference.

Certainly there was a group which could be termed the “liberal leadership”, i.e., a group of generally recognized leaders of the liberal Democratic political faction, in the period 1964-66, but they represented only their faction, not the nation.

Furthermore this leadership group was tearing itself apart over the war in Vietnam during the 1967 calendar year. This was very, very apparent in California.

The period when “radical” but non-nutball lefties started merging with anti-Vietnam War but still “traditional” liberals began after 1968. Even the Democratic freshman Congressional class of 1974 was not at all radical.

IMO political scientist historians should pay more attention to events during the Carter administration for the process under discussion. The non-nutball lefties and the by-then remnants of what Piereson and Sternhold call “liberals” really merged during the first Reagan administration. But this did not start until after 1968.