ABSTRACT

This chapter deals with a consideration of the opportunities for progressives resulting from the contemporary revitalization of the national Democratic party. As the national Democratic party can lead, so progressives, using the national Democratic party as a channel for innovative ideas and ideals, can also lead. The domination of the national Democratic party by presidential and congressional officeholders was equated to a domination of the Democratic party by conservative forces especially present, in the context of the 1950s and 1960s, in a seniority-dominated Congress. In the early 1970s, a party reform movement emerged within the national Democratic party devoted to the reconstitution and revitalization of the national party. The vision of the thinkers of the Democratic Charter Movement, then, called for the creation of a policy-oriented, progressive, and independent national Democratic party—one led at the national center by an independent organizational core of party strategists and policy-articulating leaders.