"There is no chance of progress and reform in an administration in which war plays a principal part"
-Woodrow Wilson, 1913
Progressivism; largely defined by its goals of increasing social welfare and reigning in the excesses of "Gilded Age" Capitalism , reviving "moralism" in the United States through such movements of temperance/prohibition, and fighting corruption and increasing the efficiency of government both through greater public involvement in politics and putting more power in the hands of government "specialists" who could steward the nation's resources using scientific methods, was undoubtedly the defining political movement and philosophy of in America during the early 21st century. Both the Republican and Democratic parties fought to be seen as the most Progressive; in the former's case the party even splitting after Teddy Roosevelt felt his successor wasn't being Progressive enough, and lead to many reforms that have come to define American political culture to this very day: suspicion of large corporations/trusts, the position of the media as the "forth branch" of government to root out corruption and via muckraking, the concept that the Federal government has a responsibility to protect workers and consumers, direct taxation, the principal of Civil Rights (or, at least, that the rights in the Constitution needed to be respected not just by the Federal government), direct election of Senators, ect.
It was only after America's entry into the Great War and the demands of wartime society, including censorship, anti- center ethnic group and anti-Red hysteria (The general "you're with us or against us" impulse and the desire by state and local governments to prove they were the most patriotic), the channeling of big industry to the war/supply effort, and the disillusionment of the American public after the complete failure in the peace negotiations to make the world "Safe for Democracy" as the Wilson administration's idealism had sold them as the purpose of the war that it ultimately declined, to be replaced by the more rebellious, commercial, and inward-looking culture of the 1920's. Granted, no political current remains dominant forever, but I'm curious what the rest of you think about how things would have changed domestically in an America that never broke out of its isolationism (to temporary bitter disappointment) to engage in the 1st World War.
For the sake of argument (to avoid this conversation spinning off into being primarily about best opportunity for the CP to win in this scenario), let's say the Great War ends in early 1917/ late 1916 as a less Anglophilic American administration doesn't overly favor the Entente, resulting in a slightly earlier collapse of the Czarist government in Russia (Due to less available Franco-British financial and material support, a poorer situation on the Western front as France can't get as much money/material from abroad, the Germans get a small boost from neutral re-shipping as America insists on its right to trade freely with non-belligerents, ect. Alot of little things piling up), resulting in a negotiated peace between the Western Entente and the Central Powers. The war is perceived by Americans as entirely isolated from themselves: just the decadent Old World doing its thing, and in which they have a much smaller and more balanced material stake. In such a timeline, how long do you think Progressivism would have lasted? What other reforms might it manage to press through?