AHC: With the "New Deal" without Reaganism.

Good day, dear ladies and gentlemen.

I am working on one project, and it wouldn't hurt me if I could get help with a couple of points.

1) How to discredit Democrats who are not supporters of the "New Deal"?
2) Is it possible to preserve the influence of evangelism, while not allowing the Republicans to come to Reaganism?
 
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As a rather blunt and hamfisted way of doing it, have Reagan win both the 1976 primary and the general election, possibly with a minority of the popular vote, and just have everything go wrong in the 1977-1981 term. Stagflation, war(s) in the Middle East, the US drawn into a war with Iran, Reagan feuding with Congress on everything, scandals, etc.

In the (hypothetically) heavily contested Democratic Primaries of 1980, have a throwback New Deal candidate (either an actual one, or someone newly elected in the 1978 midterms) come to the forefront.
 
have evangelicalism feed into resurgent New Deal-ism, with Ds shifting more pro-life
I remember reading somewhere that anti-abortion was originally seen as a Catholic issue and it was only later that Evangelical Protestants embraced it. Maybe keeping it a Catholic issue could be a way to stop conservative Republicans using it as a wedge issue to peel the evangelical vote away from the Democrats?
 
I remember reading somewhere that anti-abortion was originally seen as a Catholic issue and it was only later that Evangelical Protestants embraced it. Maybe keeping it a Catholic issue could be a way to stop conservative Republicans using it as a wedge issue to peel the evangelical vote away from the Democrats?
that could work.
 
1) How to discredit Democrats who are not supporters of the "New Deal"?

Were there any Democrats remaining who opposed the New Deal by the time Reagan emerged as a strong presidential contender? My understanding has always been that the New Deal, unlike maybe the Great Society or other later permutations of liberalism, has always been a sine qua non of modern Democratic identity.
 
Ford in '76, liberal dem 80s/90s, different non-reaganite backlash in 1996 or 2000 but the neoliberal moment will have been dodged
 
Were there any Democrats remaining who opposed the New Deal by the time Reagan emerged as a strong presidential contender? My understanding has always been that the New Deal, unlike maybe the Great Society or other later permutations of liberalism, has always been a sine qua non of modern Democratic identity.

It's complicated. Many Democrats who came of age in the 70's or later made a point of stressing that they were open to new ideas rather than tied down to the old school tax and spend Roosevelt agenda. Gary Hart famously said that he and his allies weren't "a bunch of Hubert Humphreys." Also, there was the sense that FDR hadn't done enough for African-Americans, so the Democrats of the post-civil rights era had that to distinguish them from the old guard. Also, well, Vietnam.
 
RFK lives, gets the nomination in '68 and by the skin of his teeth beats Nixon, only to lose in 1972 to a Rockefeller or George Romney type . Which ever one of them beats Kennedy in 72 wins in 1976 over Humphrey or Scoop Jackson. Then after two mediocre (but not poor) Republican terms, a moderate Democrat like Lloyd Bentsen or John Glenn wins in 1980 only to get saddled with a recession and loses in 1984 to a center right Republican (think a Howard Baker or George HW Bush type) and they win two terms. The Democrats then nominate a socially moderate New Deal Populist in 1992 and win in the midst of a Recession. So in this scenario, the Democrats stay populist and are center right socially, while the GOP is center left socially and center right economically.
 
Reagan gets much of the credit for being a major force behind deregulation, the push to shrink government, and increase economic liberalism/neoliberalism, but really each of these predates him, catching on in the sixties and seventies with Kennedy's tax cuts, Nixon's postal privatization, and various reforms under Ford and Carter. Why? The world in 1980 was very different than that of 1940.
 
RFK lives, gets the nomination in '68 and by the skin of his teeth beats Nixon, only to lose in 1972 to a Rockefeller or George Romney type . Which ever one of them beats Kennedy in 72 wins in 1976 over Humphrey or Scoop Jackson. Then after two mediocre (but not poor) Republican terms, a moderate Democrat like Lloyd Bentsen or John Glenn wins in 1980 only to get saddled with a recession and loses in 1984 to a center right Republican (think a Howard Baker or George HW Bush type) and they win two terms. The Democrats then nominate a socially moderate New Deal Populist in 1992 and win in the midst of a Recession. So in this scenario, the Democrats stay populist and are center right socially, while the GOP is center left socially and center right economically.
It sounds good, but I still need to reduce the influence of civil society activists. The goal is to make its states more or less similar to their sample of the late 50s, without turning them into a fascist dictatorship as in Pax Atomica.
 
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