This economics textbook is saying stagflation in the very early '70s was caused by LBJ not wanting to raise taxes to pay for Vietnam and Nixon pushing to overstimulate the economy for his re-election in 1972. "In both cases, the United States pursued fiscal and monetary policies that increased overall demand at a time when production was at or near capacity."
https://books.google.com/books?id=a...n production was at or near capacity"&f=false

Then OPEC quadrupled prices in 1973 and nearly tripled them in 1979. And other sources state clearly that this shifted the supply curve inward and led to both increased prices and lower GDP, no mystery at all.
 
Wall Street also panicked in 1979 as Iran supplied the massive global oil supply amount of… drumroll… four percent. Smart people those bankers, good way to turn a profit and ruin your own country for it. So how to prevent a panic? Either Iran goes differently or perhaps American oil production is on a major curve up.

Energy and the American Future
c. April 1975
Mo Udall said:
Our privately owned resources are rapidly depleting. The great bulk of the remaining undeveloped fossil fuel resources of this country are in public ownership. It has been estimated that close to 70% of our undeveloped oil and gas resources lie under public lands, and that at least half of our mineable coal and over 85% of our oil shale are likewise owned by all the American people.

The time has come for the federal government to play a larger role in the management of our energy future. We can no longer afford to leave our lives and vital economic interests to the mercies of an oil cartel and a handful of giant corporations that have forfeited the trust of U.S. citizens.

This important agency (which might be called The National Authority for Energy Management) should be chartered and given the power to play a catalyst role in the development of the nation's publicly-owned fossil fuel resources. It should be empowered:

1) to carry out the initial exploratory drilling on the remaining offshore frontier areas on the continental shelves of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans;

2) to develop sufficient producing oil and gas wells on public lands to provide a yardstick on production costs against which the performance of private companies could be measured;

[…]

To propose the creation of this authority, is not to propose the nationalization of the U.S. oil industry. To the contrary, such an agency will provide a cutting edge that will sharpen competition in the domestic industry.

Finally, government must take a more active part in the development of new energy resources: solar, geothermal, fuel cells, and a whole variety of energy conservation technologies. Under authority already vested in the Energy Research and Development Administration, joint government-industry corporations should be set up to insure that new technologies are promptly introduced into the marketplace.
 
So how to prevent a panic? Either Iran goes differently or perhaps American oil production is on a major curve up.

Reagan getting rid of the last price controls and the windfall tax on oil got the Oilsector to start expanding again, after Carter did some steps in that direction.

Much of the problem would have been avoided had Carter got rid of Nixon's price controls sooner, and not tie a windfall profits tax on as the controls were relaxed.
 
I have presented something like this before. In 1976, Gerald Ford does not do his debate faux pas an say the Soviets do not control the Eastern European satellite countries. Ford defeats Carter. Inflation still rages, the Panama Canal gets dealt away and the Iran hostage problem emerges as it does in OTL. Ford can't run in 1980, but the public is fed up with the GOP and Reagan does not make the same impact. Ted Kennedy steps in and picks moderate John Glenn as his running mate. Inflation drops off in 1983 as markets change for real estate and petroleum sourcing. Teddy is as undefeatable as Reagan was in 1984. No supply-side economics, no hate for government, and an expanding space program, playing on the Kennedy-Glenn combination. Health care reform becomes real.
 
. . . Ted Kennedy steps in . . .
The guy's like a bit player off-stage we want to pull in from time to time.

Ted had a chaotic personal life. A former aide wrote a book in which he said the Senate engaged in a lot of cocaine use in the late '70s, we might write that off as sensationalism or not. But then Patrick Kennedy talked in 2015 about his Dad's heavy drinking. Ted Kennedy was not always all there, sorry, but that's largely the truth.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/art...s-family-plagued-drink-brother-disagrees.html

And then, yes, there's Chappaquiddick.

When the car hits the water, you're likely concussed, and as the water comes in, panicking, and even a trained Navy helicopter pilot who has specifically practiced emergency nighttime evacuation might have troubled saving both himself or herself and a passenger. On that part, we judge Ted too harshly. But the fact that he didn't report the accident for a number of hours. That does not speak well for someone who needs to handle crisis as our President. Even if concussed, on that aspect, we don't judge Ted too harshly.
 
Let's say it isn't Kennedy in 1980. Inflation and aforementioned events will assure a party change in the White House, so let's pick a Democrat without so many skeletons in the closet. The outcome could still be the same.
 
@Mark E. Actually, whether or not a Democrat wins in technically irrelevant to the OP; remember, we're interested in how the 1970's themselves could have been more liberal, with how it could have set up the 1980's being secondary at best.
 
Scenario 3: 1974 POD

A 0.5% additional swing nets:
  • Kansas: William Roy (D) v. Bob Dole (R) (inc.)
  • Nevada: Harry Reid (D) v. Paul Laxalt (R)
  • New Hampshire: John A. Durkin (D) v. Louis C. Wyman (R)
  • North Dakota: William L. Guy (D) v. Milton Young (R) (inc.)
  • Oklahoma: Ed Edmondson (D) v. Henry Bellmon (R) (inc.)
That takes the Democratic majority to 65, a helpful boost for a Udall his first term and a couple of those seats can be kept in 1980 assuming Udall is solidly popular.
 
P&B%2026.11%20Decrease%20Aggregate%20Supply.jpg

Stagflation

When the price of oil quadrupled in 1973 and then more than doubled in '79, with that abrupt an increase in the price of a major input, the economy just could do less.

And that will hold whether we were liberals, conservatives, L-5 space enthusiasts, back-to-the-land off-the-grid people, pie-in-the-sky nuclear fusion advocates, "small is beautiful" advocates, whether we were Christian evangelicals, Catholic voters, New Agers, whether we were marijuana advocates, swingers, monogamists, S&Mers, social spankers, enjoyers of ribald books, etc, etc, Heck, whether we were do-it-yourself home repair people, enjoyers of the great outdoors, people who aspired to buy an RV, people who like long road trips, advocates of entrepreneurship (8 out of 10 new businesses fail), etc, etc. I mean, whether we liked shag carpet, avocado green appliances, hanging lamps, and fondue for dinner!

Heck, we could even be intelligent raccoons and it would still hold.
 


The only thing I can think of, is that in David Halberstam's book about the rise and fall of the U.S. auto industry, there was a guy talking about the end of the era of cheap oil well before the 1973 OPEC oil embargo. Of course, people in neither government or industry really listened to the guy.

But, since we're looking for PODs starting April 1968 and later, maybe in a different timeline people do.

* this guy was Charley Maxwell
 
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. . . from busing?
Public schools are places where we are made to believe we are not good enough to fit in.

And this kind of does have something to do with busing as people invest a lot of energy into fictions and fables about what neighborhood schools should be, and feelings run high indeed.
 
The “1970’s” meaning the period from 1968 to 1980, and the main priorities for “liberal”, in order of importance, being:
  • civil rights legislation (eg Fair Housing Act of 1968) and civil liberties (1st amendment freedoms, etc) advance at least as much as OTL
  • environmental and energy legislation at least as strong as Nixon’s OTL legislation
  • federalization or welfare or something bringing the US closer to some kind of citizen’s stipend (eg Nixon’s proposed F.A.P., or NIT, etc)
  • some kind of Universal Healthcare
  • bonus points for ERA, Full Employment Act, etc
What I’m interested in here is, with no PoDs prior to April of 1968, what is the best PoD for achieving the above by 1980? To make it slightly more challenging, assume any given scenario has to fit into one of three broad categories:
  1. a Democrat defeats Nixon in 1968, but loses to Ronald Reagan in 1972, who serves two terms
  2. Nixon wins 1968, but loses re-election in 1972 to a Democrat who serves two terms
  3. Nixon is impeached instead of resigning, the 1976 election comes down to Udall v Reagan
My main concerns with the above being -- first, would having Vietnam wind down sooner help or hurt in this regard? (On the one hand, the nightmare ends sooner; on the other, we don’t get the learning experience of the Pentagon Papers or US v NYT happening in the midst of the war.) Second, would averting Watergate hurt or help in this regard?

CONSOLIDATE: Just to note -- the three categories above are not referring to PoDs.

It would be really hard without a POD before 1968.

Civil rights enjoyed a string of major victories (Civil Rights Act, Voting Rights Act, Fair Housing Act, Brown finally being enforced). Not much else that could be advanced at that point, as legislated racism was dead and the battlefield was now individual bad acts.

We passed the Clean Air and Water Act in 1970 and created the EPA. Not much room for additional major legislation at that point - the liberal goal had been achieved. A new ice age, not global warming, was the concern back then. Maybe you could have federal support for vehicles that ran on natural gas, but having a large number of those could potentially have resulted in unintended consequences that offset the environmental benefit.

You could have achieved universal healthcare under Nixon had it not been for Ted Kennedy, who (charitable interpretation) made the perfect the enemy of the good or (less charitable) opposed it to spite Nixon.

F.A.P. might have been doable if it weren't less than 10 years after the creation of Great Society programs that would be supplanted by the proposal, but once again that's a pre-1968 POD.

You would really need a more conservative 1960s for a more liberal 1970s.
 
You could have achieved universal healthcare under Nixon had it not been for Ted Kennedy, who (charitable interpretation) made the perfect the enemy of the good or (less charitable) opposed it to spite Nixon.

F.A.P. might have been doable if it weren't less than 10 years after the creation of Great Society programs that would be supplanted by the proposal, but once again that's a pre-1968 POD.
The latter actually passed the House OTL, so I would say it was already "doable"; in conjunction with the former, that could take care of most of the OP.
 
I'd have to say that, through some absolute miracle, McGovern/Shriver winning in '72. Perhaps Nixon being outed as a space alien :openedeyewink:.
 
. . . Perhaps Nixon being outed as a space alien :openedeyewink:.
;)

————————

Yes, for ol’ George McGovern to have even a ghost of a chance . .

(1) Nixon would have to stumble (although perhaps not that badly!), and

(2) George would have to run one heck of a campaign, much better than he did OTL. With midwest reticence, he didn’t want to use his status as a war hero. Well, have a political ally tell the American public that you were a bomber pilot in the European theater of WWII and had flown such-and-such number of missions.
 
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