and road Reagan's coattails. Shit, Phil Grahm was a Democrat until 1983! Phil Phucking Grahm!

Into centrists and leftists. This is why I think Biden is in such a great position this go around, he can play the centrist role while 10 other candidates are courting the left, splitting the votes.

Let's just make up a number and say 60% of the Democratic Party are in the left camp and 40% are in the center camp. A strong centrist candidate like Biden can be in a good position right now since most others are courting the very vocal left side of the party.

In terms of abortion for example, we had about 1/4 of office holders who were anti abortion to a large degree (either only permitting for life/health of mother, or only for life/health, rape or incest) now we have virtually none. In terms of LGBT rights a significant portion, quite likely a majority, of our elected officials opposed all but the most basic of those rights (bans on active discrimination in employment and education). Our party had a huge racist wing into the late 1970's. I realize for many here those issues don't matter but for others here they matter a great deal.

also wager we're on the same side of most issues so maybe lighten up, ok?

While it true, as you pointed out, that our party is more enlightened and, therefore, more liberal, on many social issues, the same cannot be said about our support for unions in particular and working people in general. It also cannot be said about income disparity, taxation of individual wealth and corporate income or the plight of "the least among us"---the homeless, the uninsured poor, the elderly poor.

We have also shifted just rightward enough to permit a slim soulless Republican Senate majority to seed the federal judicial system with incompetent right wing ideologues who will be aiding and abetting the successors to the Adelsons and the Kochs for decades.

that we have moved to the right on those issues. A whole bunch of Democrats were all for a welfare state provided it was restricted to Whites. It was only when it was expanded to include people of color that many of the elected Democrats in the South and rank and file Democrats in many places rejected the notion that government should address inequality and the plight of the least among us. Unions were also anethema in the solid Democratic south of the 1960's and into the 1970's. They are now anethema in a largely GOP South. I shouldn't have said horse crap but I do get tired of hearing how right wing the party that actually fights for my rights is in comparison to the one that fought against them.

to the opposition. My intent was to compare some of our current positions to those we espoused in the past. If that was unclear, that's on me.

I appreciate your passion and sincerity. Thanks.

or enlightenment desired.

One anchor to understanding is that liberal and conservative are basic personality types. Preschoolers already show identifying traits, and MRIs can often predict personality with pretty good accuracy. A lot that's been studied about these personality traits is on line in lay language. These all span the spectrum from mild traits of to strong and hard core. A very common mix, among women especially, is economically more conservative and socially more liberal.

Importantly with regard to terminology, "centrist" and "moderate" are neither personality NOR ideological types. Both are variations of either of the major liberal or conservative personality or ideological types. I.e., moderate liberal. Strong conservative. Centrist Republicans and centrist Democrats are typically a mix of mild-to-moderate traits, the most common economically more conservative with socially more liberal, especially among women.

Liberals span the spectrum, of course, and I've always been a strong liberal. But not radical or extremist in terms of personality, both of which increasingly leave behind the best traits of both in favor of...increasingly extremist thinking and behaviors. Only a very few extremists set bombs, but they all seem to despise and feel a need to destroy the stable, working governments most people are glad to have.

Our nation was established on liberal principles as what is referred to now as a western liberal democracy. The entire New Deal era from FDR to the rise of Reaganism at the end of the 1970s was an era of liberal dominance in government. That era came to an end as people finally wanted something different and shifted to a more conservative mood. And, boy, did we get change -- something no one expected: destruction of the traditional conservatism that would have blocked the ambitions of our new billionaire classes and replacement with what has served them, using the power of the worst negatives of the right to make it happen.

Btw, anyone imagining that Democrats must then somehow have had a personality transplant in the 1990s, or at lesat been taken over by conservatives, needs to realize that we'd been losing power increasingly since the huge Reagan revolution of the 1980s, to the point that in the 1990s articles asking if the declining Democratic Party could survive at all were common. People were electing conservatives, not "radical liberal Democrats" as Newtie called us. We hate looking back to that era because our party did embrace policies most Americans insisted they wanted in order to be able to win any elections at all and keep at least some minority power. But it wasn't because the liberals who make up the majority of our party became conservative. We didn't.

for example one could easily be socially liberal, fiscally conservative and hawkish on foreign policy all at the same time, ala HRC. Elizabeth Warren is a fiscal conservative, yet is viewed as a socialist by the right. I have no clue as to what her views on foreign policy may be. Suffice to say, leftists are a truly rare breed in the U.S.

Much of the shift away from liberalism was driven by Libertarian forces. Especially the pro-business and anti-labor ideology. Support for social services was sacrificed at the corporate altar.

Or supported the Equal Rights Amendment for women? So I guess we passed that, correct?

People seen as far left today were mainstream back then.
Many say the democrats are too extreme today but, not republicans!