August 1968 and the Roots of the Liberal Coup 

Sorry for the lack of posts. For those hungry (desperate!) for some content, you're in luck. Over at Inside Catholic, I wrote a story about the subject above. Here is how the story begins:

"What Goldwater was to Reagan, McGovern was to Obama," New York Times writer Sam Tanenhaus wrote about the 2008 election, in reference to the two fathers of America's modern political movements. The first story, about the conservative ascendancy in the Republican Party, has been told. The second, covering the liberal ascendancy in the Democratic Party, has not. (That is, until my book came out last fall.)

 

In earlier columns, I wrote about the late Fred Dutton's liberal vision for the Democratic Party. Dutton sought to build a Democratic coalition made up of young people, African-Americans, and college-educated suburbanites -- three key constituencies of Obama's campaign.

 

So how did Dutton do it? How did he destroy the old Roosevelt coalition (Catholics, labor, African-Americans, intellectuals, and white Southerners) and create the McGovern coalition?

 

In my book, I show how antiwar liberals overthrew what Lyndon Johnson called "the Catholic bosses" in a coup d'état. Here's how it all began.