big Democrats ‘68 oppose war, but conservatives don’t criticize liberals as “weak” for next 50 years

I think this is quite a challenge, because a big part of the world view of many conservatives is the importance of being strong.

So, what I'm saying is that Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy still oppose continuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey still wins the nomination and doesn't quite catch Nixon in the general election, but in the years to come this isn't a common refrain to claim that liberals are "weak."

Please have at it. :)
 
Have the liberals succeed in diplomatic affairs and when the conservatives lead the US into war, have the liberals go full in assisting the vets while attacking the conservatives into sending good men into a pointless war just to show off.

A lot of the air and such would be sucked out of them.
 
I think this is quite a challenge, because a big part of the world view of many conservatives is the importance of being strong.

So, what I'm saying is that Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy still oppose continuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey still wins the nomination and doesn't quite catch Nixon in the general election, but in the years to come this isn't a common refrain to claim that liberals are "weak."

Please have at it. :)

(1) Conservatives had been criticizing liberals as "soft" on Communism for decades before Vietnam.

(2) Fun fact about 1968: "Whatever they may have thought privately, neither [Kennedy nor McCarthy] came out for unilateral withdrawal." https://books.google.com/books?id=5L-EeG9djO4C&pg=PA890
 
I think this is quite a challenge, because a big part of the world view of many conservatives is the importance of being strong.

So, what I'm saying is that Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy still oppose continuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey still wins the nomination and doesn't quite catch Nixon in the general election, but in the years to come this isn't a common refrain to claim that liberals are "weak."

Please have at it. :)

Right now, we live in an era when some liberals(for reasons that can be debated elsewhere) are accusing a Republican president of being naive about the manipulations of one of the few remaining Communist regimes in the world. So it's not like your scenario is totally ASB. But it probably needs a MAJOR reconfiguration of the ideological line-up of the Cold War, or, better yet, an earlier end to the Cold War.
 
The tendency of modern USA politics to refight the 1960s all the time is mainly demographic/ generational and I don't think you can make it go away without getting rid of the whole baby boomer phenomenon.

One obvious example is to let the American right get their way on doing some aggressive foreign policy move that winds up going badly, but then this actually happened IOTL and it didn't change the dynamic.
 
(1) Conservatives had been criticizing liberals as "soft" on Communism for decades before Vietnam. . .
During the late ‘50s, Senate Democrats basically criticized Pres. Eisenhower for being weak and talked about a non-existent “missile gap.” The Soviets didn’t even catch up till the 1970s.

What it really was, was slightly younger men criticizing an older man who had recently had a heart attack.
 
Have the liberals succeed in diplomatic affairs and when the conservatives lead the US into war, have the liberals go full in assisting the vets while attacking the conservatives into sending good men into a pointless war just to show off.

I dunno. From what I've seen, people who are inclined to endorse the conservative view of things aren't much bothered by the misuse and mistreatment of soldiers by their own government. Trump's insults toward McCain("I like people who weren't captured") didn't hurt him all that much among the base(and I say this as someone who was expecting that to be a major gaffe).

Possibly I'm imposing a contemporary view on that past. Most of the lunkheads who nihilistically cheered when Trump made fun of McCain probably had no experience of combat themselves, much less torture, besides what they've seen in movies. It might have been different when you still had most of "the Greatest Generation" alive and politically aware.
 
During the late ‘50s, Senate Democrats basically criticized Pres. Eisenhower for being weak and talked about a non-existent “missile gap.” The Soviets didn’t even catch up till the 1970s.

What it really was, was slightly younger men criticizing an older man who had recently had a heart attack.

True as that may be, they were still essentially using the Republican playbook against them. The GOP had been ragging on the Democrats for "losing China" for a long time before then. What's more important is the underlying assertion of values behind the Republican attacks. Their line has always been that Democrats can't defend America because, as blinkered as they are by moral relativism and anti-imperialism and anti-racism, Democrats don't really believe in America. Democrats can counterattack Republicans for incompetence or negligence in defending America, but they've never been willing or able to attack the GOP as incapable on a moral level. Without that connective tissue, their arguments will always be thinner and less damaging. Incompetence can be rectified - a lack of values can't, at least not easily.
 
. . . probably needs a MAJOR reconfiguration of the ideological line-up of the Cold War, . . .
I very much like the optimistic scenario that following the death of Stalin in 1953, the U.S. and USSR end up competing much more on economic terms as far as trade deals and genuine economic development, trying to win the allegiance of a number of different third world countries.
 
I dunno. From what I've seen, people who are inclined to endorse the conservative view of things aren't much bothered by the misuse and mistreatment of soldiers by their own government. Trump's insults toward McCain("I like people who weren't captured") didn't hurt him all that much among the base(and I say this as someone who was expecting that to be a major gaffe).

Possibly I'm imposing a contemporary view on that past. Most of the lunkheads who nihilistically cheered when Trump made fun of McCain probably had no experience of combat themselves, much less torture, besides what they've seen in movies. It might have been different when you still had most of "the Greatest Generation" alive and politically aware.

Yeah, pretty much. The different times would be a big issue, plus the USSR is still around.
 
Its true that the idea of Democrats being weak on forgein policy did emerge in the late 40s, with the loss of China to communism. However this perception however was somewhat neutralised in the 50s/early 60s, with Democrats criticising Ike and Nixon for not only the missile gap, but also for allowing the Soviets to be able appear to have more advanced Space technology with the launch of Sputnik.

What caused the Democrats to regain the perception of being weak and incompetent on forgein policy in the late 60s and beyond were two factors:

1) They were blamed for losing Vietnam. While its true that South Vietnam fell under the Ford administration, most people thought that the war started to go badly under the Johnson administration. In particular people felt that the civilian leadership were responsible for losing Vietnam and for having too much power over military affairs (McNamara in particular was regarded as a prime culprit, and he was appointed by JFK and stayed on with Johnson).

2) The two Democratic presidential candidates in the 1970s were doves. One was McGovern who was regarded as the leader of the loathed New Left hippies. The other was Jimmy Carter whose Forgein policy basically ended with America being humiliated by Iran.

Its going to be difficult to prevent Liberalism to at least some extent being regarded as weak on forgein policy. The easiest way to (somewhat) prevent this is to have Jimmy Carter lose in 1976 and have a more Hawkish Democrat get nominated in 1980 and go from there.
 

RousseauX

Donor
I think this is quite a challenge, because a big part of the world view of many conservatives is the importance of being strong.

So, what I'm saying is that Gene McCarthy and Bobby Kennedy still oppose continuing the war in Vietnam. Humphrey still wins the nomination and doesn't quite catch Nixon in the general election, but in the years to come this isn't a common refrain to claim that liberals are "weak."

Please have at it. :)
'68 isn't the problem imo, it's not too hard to recover from opposing vietnam in 1968: it was 1972 and the Carter administration which really set in the image of Democrats as weak on national defense
 
I very much like the optimistic scenario that following the death of Stalin in 1953, the U.S. and USSR end up competing much more on economic terms as far as trade deals and genuine economic development, trying to win the allegiance of a number of different third world countries.

If you've got GOP-allied businessmen reaching out to some of the left-wing regimes in the Third World and Soviet Bloc, that could be an opening for the Dems to portray the Republicans as fellow-travelers and useful idiots of Communists. Even if the ostensible point of the outreach is to draw those nations into the capitalist orbit.

I suppose there could be Democrat-allied businessmen doing the same thing, but since the GOP is regarded as the more pro-business party, attacks on THEIR businessmen might have more resonance with the public. ("Tax cuts for the rich so they can build more hotels for Mao? The American people aren't gonna stand for that!!")
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=a...Warsaw Pact" conventional symmetrical&f=false

' . . Pre-presidentially, Carter . . . . . argued that closed conventional symmetry between NATO and the Warsaw Pact was (or would be) enough to convince the Soviet Union that an attack on Western Europe was futile. . . . . Second, if for some reason the existing balance was actually not enough, Carter suggested that the United States and the Soviet Union could sign a no-nuclear-use pledge. . . '
Yes, building up NATO conventional forces would have been a good idea. The problem is that it's really expensive.
 
. . . One was McGovern who was regarded as the leader of the loathed New Left hippies. . .
George McGovern served honorably as a pilot in the European theater during WWII. The problem is, because of Midwestern reticence he didn't want to trade on his war record. He was even described as a war hero, although I'm sure he would have said, just a guy doing his job.

Well, he should have let some political allies strike a middle course and brag some on his behalf without getting carried away.

Plus, McGovern was before my time, so I don't know if he was just an undynamic speaker, etc.
 

Oct. 19, 1987

http://www.newsweek.com/bush-battles-wimp-factor-207008

' . . Bush's tight, twangy voice is a common problem. Under stress, experts explain, the vocal cords tighten and the voice is higher than normal and lacks power. . '
Way unfair. Bush was a young pilot in WWII who went down in the Pacific and was rescued. A big problem is we the American public. We probably have too narrow a view of what a leader can be. And sometimes, yes, in-your-face confrontation and matter-of-factly standing up for yourself is necessary, but we probably don't have enough other skills beyond this. I used to think journalism could elevate our skills (maybe only in theory!)

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Maybe George McGovern also sometimes came across as a tall, skinny guy with too high pitched a voice.

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* Newsweek magazine now owned by someone with major church connections in South Korea
 
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