freepcrusher
YaBB God
Posts: 3,832
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« on: May 13, 2015, 04:00:00 PM » |
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Era 1: 1995-
Republicans have mostly had control during this time period and this has been more trench warfare politics and the rise of winner-take-all, zero-sum battles. That's not to say politics weren't ugly but it seems its more noticeable now. Someone like Gingrich, DeLay, Pelosi are definitely products of this environment
Era 2: 1975-1995; Dems have control and often have enough of a cushion to offset dixiecrats. The politicians of this era tended to be smart at holding otherwise difficult seats. I'm not sure what politicians define this era but a few are: Philip Burton, Mo Udall, and many of the watergate children like Phil Sharp or Tom Downey. You also had an influx of "acceptable-to-all-factions" southern democrats like Butler Derrick and Stephen Neal from the Carolinas and a few others.
Era 3: 1959-1975; This was the flux era between the conservative coalition and the post-watergate party. There were a lot of changes going on in this era in the U.S. and the same could be said for congress. By 1958, the dems had solidified control of the HOR but there was still vestiges of conservatism as a lot of the would-be-committee chairmen were defeated in 1946. As a result you still had a lot of unreconstructed types holding power (Judge Smith). This was the era of the Democratic Study Group and what not and the evolution of what liberalism meant. Many pols thought to be liberals were all of a sudden not as new issues came into the fore (think Chet Holifield, Philip Philbin, Jim Delaney etc). Guys like Holifield, Philbin, and Delaney were the type of pols who defined this area as the bridge between the insurgents (DSG) and the dixiecrat types.
Era 4: 1939-1959; This was the era of the Conservative Coalition with the democrats not often being above 60% and the republicans often having enough southern democrats to peel off support. In fact up to half of the democratic caucus during this era was from the deep south and the rest were border state blue dogs and big city machine types willing to go along to get along. This is the height of the red scare era and the pols defining this era would be the red-baiters (Parnell Thomas, John Rankin, Martin Dies) and the Midwestern Old Right (Clare Hoffman, Noah Mason, Clarence Brown). The 1958 election, especially in the senate, ends up with these guys losing (in the senate Bricker, Jenner, Malone, McCarthy all either lose or would have lost had they not died/retired).
Era 5: 1933-1939; This is the New Deal era with the democrats basically having the power to do whatever they wanted. The number of seats they held were unsustainable and by 1938, the economy had relapsed, the midwest was wary that Roosevelt might get into WWII, and some pro-New Deal democrats began to turn on him when Roosevelt was recruiting people to primary incumbents. The New Deal in many ways was a collection of various third party movements, many of them crackpot before the Depression that had some success (Francis Townsend, William Lemke, Charles LaFollette, James Weaver). This was also the peak era of the agrarian radical as there were many third party officeholders in MN and WI. By 1947 though the Wheelers, LaFollettes and Shipsteads were mostly gone.
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