The notion that Reagan was not a friend of the working man is a fraud. I was there. He was. Members of real unions - of real workers such as truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc. - were Reagan supporters. He was the first populist and detested big government. The real Republican party is continuing on that path. Real Republ…
The notion that Reagan was not a friend of the working man is a fraud. I was there. He was. Members of real unions - of real workers such as truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc. - were Reagan supporters. He was the first populist and detested big government. The real Republican party is continuing on that path. Real Republicans detest the "elites" - of business, government or the universities. Those elites detest the working man. Just look at the contempt they heap on the Canadian truckers or the Walmart shoppers they revile as Trump supporters. We will continue to recapture the Republican party. No more favors for billionaires. Or large corporations, especially the rapacious health care "insurers." The Republican party will continue to evolve along Reagan's "big tent" model, embracing all those - regardless of creed, color or national origin - who want to join us in putting America - and Americans - first.
Under Ronald Reagan the war against the middle class started and shamefully continued under presidents of both major parties. As a result there is hardly a middle class left in the US now. Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class. The American political landscape has deteriorated equally and now, when American democracy is on its last legs, Americans can increasingly only choose between some crazy ideologues on the left and some crazy cultists on the right. Sanity and common sense are on steep decline in both major parties. What America desperately needs now is a new political force that can unite the few remaining reasonable people from both parties who get cancelled by wokeness in one party or purged from party ranks because they do not blindly follow their cult leader in the other party. That's the sad state of affairs. Unfortunately there is no such political force in sight right now, so my prognosis for the future of this country is quite bleak. Ronald Reagan was the president who started this all by attacking the unions and therefore causing the decline of the American middle class. And Donald Trump is the president who will most likely complete the destruction of America. I do not believe that Joe Biden is even remotely able to turn things around and stop him. I don't think he even fully understands the peril American democracy faces.
I agree with you. IMHO the Libertarian party is the only feasible answer we have at this point based on name recognition alone. Our 2 party system is what's destroying our country.
Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class? Where do you live? I am neither. No one I know is either. I know vast swathes of people who are neither. I can name city after city full of neither. Our political system is failing, as you say. And we do have some loss of opportunity at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. But no middle class? That's nuts. We are a mostly middle class nation.
What exactly is a “real worker” as opposed to I guess a “fake worker”? Are accountants and lawyers fake workers? What precisely makes a trucker’s work “real” but a lawyer’s work fake?
Attorneys have the bar, which artificially controls the labor pool of attorneys. Accountants have their certification stuff which has the same effect. Doctors have the same stuff. They all organize, just in a different way. Labor unions act as a different method of raising labor prices of their particular occupations.
With that all said — your response doesn’t actually explain what makes occupations that are run by unions more “real” than those that aren’t.
I don’t follow. I didn’t write anything about government workers.
Are you referring to a distinction between labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by the government, such as teachers and labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by private companies, such as miners?
And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work? And suggesting that workers of private sector unions do?
Perhaps if the fed didn’t bail out General Motors and the California government weren’t captured by various private sector unions, I’d be more sympathetic to your sentiments.
I feel like today there is an unholy incestuous relationship between government and unions, whether “private” or “public”, that is more harmful than helpful to the general public and at times even members of the unions themselves.
“Big government” and “big union” are often the same entity.
They don’t organize to confront / negotiate with the management of their employer. True. Sometimes. Teachers unions, for example, have a very similar relationship to their “employer”, the government, that doctors have to their often “employers”, the government and insurance companies.
And I think you are a bit idealistic about the purpose to maintain reputation and integrity of professions. How is that working for lawyers these days?
In my younger years I went to massage therapy school so that I could become certified to be a massage therapist. I spent months learning about pseudo scientific theories and studying legitimate science that had no relevance to the actual work of a massage therapist. Unfortunately I suspect that is the norm for associations and certifications that control the labor of professions. I do like to believe that med school has a lot less bullshit though. Yet, the bullshit certainly does still exist, and one of its effect is artificially raising labor prices.
Okay, if work that isn’t real isn’t fake what is it? The alternative to “real” is…?
Humans can survive without fuel and clothing. And we can certainly survive without truckers or cashiers or coal miners. We can live without farmers. Every modern occupation is expendable. Humans evolved hunting and gathering our food and carrying children our backs.
What is particularly physical about the work of truckers btw? Some truckers only drive and other people actually load and unload the goods they transport. Are those truckers less “real”? Is the work of a dentist less “real” than a warehouse worker because the dentist burns less calories in their labor?
And what tangible stuff do truckers produce? They move stuff with a vehicle, they don’t “produce” anything.
Do I care? No, not really, but it’s nonsense, and I tend to point out nonsense when I come across it. Especially nonsense that has a hint of moral evaluation.
Tangible work vs intangible work has more sense than real and… unreal work. But tangible and intangible work doesn’t actually map to the the occupations people typically apply to real and unreal. Truckers for example, they are using a machine to move physical objects. If I program a machine to move physical objects, using a machine (a computer, with keyboard) —how is that not “tangible” if what the truckers do is tangible? Something like teaching guitar… that is much more “intangible”.
Labor that requires a lot of physical exertion — eg professional mixed martial arts, shipping dock hands, life guards and infantry — vs labor that does not, Eg trucking, cab driving, and programming could be sensible categories. But people aren’t going to stress those from a political perspective, as they don’t map to the political divisions in the labor force.
You used punchcards? That’s hard labor. You may as well have been swinging an axe. I get exhausted having to wait for my IDE to provide its intellisense.
That's correct. The Reagan era was full of ambivalence about free trade and immigration. For all the support these had (much of it borrowed from Democrats, who were back then much bigger supporters of free trade and immigration than Republicans), there was still a significant strand in the Republican party of "national conservatism" descended from the nation-unifying Unionism and Whig Party of the 19th century and the Civil War. This definitely included strong support for the "working man" and his ability to support a family on one income. Thus the strong Republican support from the 1850s until the 1970s of tariffs and restrictions on immigration. It was not until the high inflation of the 1970s that American wages became disconnected from productivity and American families lost the ability to support themselves on one income.
(To give one, very important example, the extreme financial imbalances of the early 80s -- high if falling inflation and high US interest rates -- led to an overly strong dollar, putting American manufacturing at a big disadvantage. A major effort was undertaken to talk the dollar down -- the Plaza Accord -- and Reagan agreed to import quotas on Japanese and German cars, an example of "national conservatism" at work. The Japanese and German companies got around these, in part, by investing and building factories here, bringing their capital and hiring Americans. This move was possible only because Japan and Germany, once enemies, are part of the US-led geopolitical order -- not just trading partners but allies with common political and legal concepts. Compare with something similar if attempted by China -- arousing suspicion because apparently economic moves are rightly suspected as having an ulterior, hostile political agenda along with just economic motives. China has never accepted the US-led liberal international order, a point I hope everyone gets now.)
To bring it closer to our time, American manufacturing and the working class, while battered by the high inflation of the 1970s (a result of the Great Society, the Vietnam war, and abandonment of the gold standard) and the early 80s recessions, held their own through the early 1990s. It was the rise of neoliberalism and the US dollar-dominant world financial system after 1992 or so -- accompanied by NAFTA in 1994 and then China's entry into the WTO in early 2001 -- that really demolished American manufacturing. In the 1970s and 80s, during the Cold War, it had to compete with fellow developed countries like Germany and Japan, with similar labor standards and part of the US-led geopolitical system. Not so after 1994, when suddenly American companies and workers had to compete with countries not only much poorer, but bedeviled by corruption or repression. Don't mistake it: the neoliberal elite today wants to use Chinese-style repression to turn us into something like parts of Latin America.
This was perceived correctly in the early 90s by certain figures like Ross Perot (a Democrat and the true avatar of Trump -- Perot encouraged Trump to run multiple times) and Pat Buchanan. The reaction then of the Republican establishment to both was horror. Thus the Republican leadership gradually lost touch with its base. It's amazing that this period lasted as long as it did, from 1992 through the 2012 election. But it was doomed to end eventually, and it did with the rise of populist figures like Steve Bannon and Trump, and the revamped Breitbart.
Reagan was very effective in his fight against big government and in his support of the workers. Remember, he fired the air traffic controllers who sought power.
And yes, this is a battle of classes, elites vs. working class. No one says this, everyone creates the division along race, gender, etc…. But the reality is, class is where this current cultural battle is being waged.
I agree with you about Reagan But the class thing was the traditional socialist gambit and it did not work well here because we really do have mobility both up and down - people make fortunes, people lose fortunes. And we had many methods to do so. Thus the need for division by other identifiers.
Several authors have discussed the phenomenon of todays culture where they concluded as I did, it is about class and they use other identifiers to hide their intent. Just look at the corporate America woke. They side with the various oppressed identity groups to carry favor and improve their bonafides, as well as to protect themselves from attack, and at the same time, they continue polluting, harsh labor practices, predatory pricing and other undesirable activities in order to achieve their profit targets.
I agree with your comments about corporate America feigning wokeness. And I'll clarify that class struggle has historically not worked here. I fear we are in uncharted territory though.
I so hope you're right. The Republican Party is SO MUCH BETTER now than it was "before Trump". The young people that joined the party were/are so impressive. I am so glad that the Never Trumpers, the Lincoln Project and their ilk are gone. I do hope Trump is replaced, but the people he brought in greatly improved the party.
Actual explanation: You started to notice that what Democrats are telling you isn't true, but you haven't yet accepted that that was happening a long time ago, too.
Just as one has to be at least 35 to be president, I propose an upper age limit for the Presidency (And Congress?), perhaps 65 or 70 so that if elected to two terms the president would not exceed say 75 to 80 while in office
I'm not sure you and I would agree on everything, but I was around for Reagan's elections too. We had a name for his blue collar supporters - Reagan Democrats - and the number of them rocked the political world in 1980 and '84.
Absolutely. They were not a major factor in 1980, but they were big in 1984 and 1988. Like Eisenhower in 1956 and Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 won virtually in a landslide, taking over 40% of the Jewish vote and close to half of the Hispanic vote, to name two major Democratic voter blocs.
For younger Americans, it's hard to convey how much damage has been done by the Baby Boomers' takeover of American institutions since the 1990s and, for example, their "identity politics" propaganda. Those old enough to remember will know what I'm talking about. The transformation of the news media Batya presents in her book is one very important aspect of this trend with roots in the rise of the college-credentialed class since the 1960s.
My parents were lifelong Democrats. My dad was the precinct leader in our precinct, a perpetual delegate to the state convention, and in 1976 he was an alternate delegate at the national convention in NYC (he was determined to prevent Ted Kennedy from becoming the nominee). He was also a local USWA union leader--I spent a lot of time at the union hall in my childhood.
My parents voted for Reagan both times (so did I, in 1984: the first vote I ever cast).
My mom, lifelong Conservative and Catholic, knew Ted Kennedy to be the devil. Instead of telling me sweet bedtime stories, she'd tell me about Chappaquiddick. It's still unbelievable that actually happened, with the press lending him and his family cover. The Lion of the Senate? Puh-leeze. More like Satan with a neck brace.
In the House, these centrist-conservatives were known as the “Blue Dogs” or “Blue Dog Democrats”.
On the other hand, and notwithstanding his infamous stump speech denouncing the nine scariest words (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”), President Reagan famously expanded the federal government. In the end, our government is only as good as the people who elect it.
Actually, the federal government, except for the Pentagon, shrank in Reagan's first two years, when the Republicans and conservative Democrats (remember them?) were dominant in Congress. The federal govt didn't start to expand again in a major way until the last two years of Bush Sr., then Clinton, then Bush Jr. The expansion was different from the 1960s and involved many more mandates, contractors, and other indirect instruments.
Reagan had the Senate for his first couple of years, and with them he enacted a massive downsizing of government, except for the military. He declared a hiring freeze that lasted years. Even when the Dems took back the Congress, he still had enough popular support that they could barely get anything done without his signature.
I recall reading an article (Time or Newsweek) about the frustration of union bosses who were trying to convince their members to vote Democratic , or against Reagan, for his 2nd term. This quote, from a union worker, has always stuck with me: "I don't know what to tell you...With him (Reagan) we stand tall."
If you'd been at the 1986 celebration of the centennial of Lady Liberty in New York, you would understand every thing about that union worker's comment. It was a magical celebration of our country Led by the President and Mrs. Reagan. Everyone was proud to be an American.
The "real" decline in unions started in the late 1970s, when union power had rendered us uncompetitive in world markets for all sorts of manufactured goods - particularly automobiles. Compare the 1980 Chevy Citation with the 1980 Honda Accord - all you need to know.
You are absolutely correct. They priced themselves right out of the market. And, leading up to this, they had extensive help from the Kennedy administration which "collaborated" with big business and big labor to set wages and prices. This was one of the biggest leaps in the U.S. away from capitalism and toward corporatism.
The PATCO debacle occurred AFTER the wave of union power had crested. It simply crystallized the absurdity of unchecked (particularly public) unions in the eyes of the public.
The notion that Reagan was not a friend of the working man is a fraud. I was there. He was. Members of real unions - of real workers such as truck drivers, plumbers, electricians, etc. - were Reagan supporters. He was the first populist and detested big government. The real Republican party is continuing on that path. Real Republicans detest the "elites" - of business, government or the universities. Those elites detest the working man. Just look at the contempt they heap on the Canadian truckers or the Walmart shoppers they revile as Trump supporters. We will continue to recapture the Republican party. No more favors for billionaires. Or large corporations, especially the rapacious health care "insurers." The Republican party will continue to evolve along Reagan's "big tent" model, embracing all those - regardless of creed, color or national origin - who want to join us in putting America - and Americans - first.
Under Ronald Reagan the war against the middle class started and shamefully continued under presidents of both major parties. As a result there is hardly a middle class left in the US now. Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class. The American political landscape has deteriorated equally and now, when American democracy is on its last legs, Americans can increasingly only choose between some crazy ideologues on the left and some crazy cultists on the right. Sanity and common sense are on steep decline in both major parties. What America desperately needs now is a new political force that can unite the few remaining reasonable people from both parties who get cancelled by wokeness in one party or purged from party ranks because they do not blindly follow their cult leader in the other party. That's the sad state of affairs. Unfortunately there is no such political force in sight right now, so my prognosis for the future of this country is quite bleak. Ronald Reagan was the president who started this all by attacking the unions and therefore causing the decline of the American middle class. And Donald Trump is the president who will most likely complete the destruction of America. I do not believe that Joe Biden is even remotely able to turn things around and stop him. I don't think he even fully understands the peril American democracy faces.
I agree with you. IMHO the Libertarian party is the only feasible answer we have at this point based on name recognition alone. Our 2 party system is what's destroying our country.
Just a handful of billionaires and an ever increasing lower class? Where do you live? I am neither. No one I know is either. I know vast swathes of people who are neither. I can name city after city full of neither. Our political system is failing, as you say. And we do have some loss of opportunity at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale. But no middle class? That's nuts. We are a mostly middle class nation.
If we dont have a private jet, we are lower class.
What exactly is a “real worker” as opposed to I guess a “fake worker”? Are accountants and lawyers fake workers? What precisely makes a trucker’s work “real” but a lawyer’s work fake?
I’m not a fan of occupational tribalism.
I was referring to the difference between public and private sector unions. Attorneys and accountants don't usually organize in my experience.
Attorneys have the bar, which artificially controls the labor pool of attorneys. Accountants have their certification stuff which has the same effect. Doctors have the same stuff. They all organize, just in a different way. Labor unions act as a different method of raising labor prices of their particular occupations.
With that all said — your response doesn’t actually explain what makes occupations that are run by unions more “real” than those that aren’t.
Government "workers?" Come on Jeffrey. Stop dancing on the head of a pin.
I don’t follow. I didn’t write anything about government workers.
Are you referring to a distinction between labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by the government, such as teachers and labor unions whose workers are primarily employed by private companies, such as miners?
And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work? And suggesting that workers of private sector unions do?
Perhaps if the fed didn’t bail out General Motors and the California government weren’t captured by various private sector unions, I’d be more sympathetic to your sentiments.
I feel like today there is an unholy incestuous relationship between government and unions, whether “private” or “public”, that is more harmful than helpful to the general public and at times even members of the unions themselves.
“Big government” and “big union” are often the same entity.
"And are you ridiculing the notion that government employees actually work?"
With the exception of police, fire and sanitation (sometimes), yes. Are you claiming they do?
They don’t organize to confront / negotiate with the management of their employer. True. Sometimes. Teachers unions, for example, have a very similar relationship to their “employer”, the government, that doctors have to their often “employers”, the government and insurance companies.
And I think you are a bit idealistic about the purpose to maintain reputation and integrity of professions. How is that working for lawyers these days?
In my younger years I went to massage therapy school so that I could become certified to be a massage therapist. I spent months learning about pseudo scientific theories and studying legitimate science that had no relevance to the actual work of a massage therapist. Unfortunately I suspect that is the norm for associations and certifications that control the labor of professions. I do like to believe that med school has a lot less bullshit though. Yet, the bullshit certainly does still exist, and one of its effect is artificially raising labor prices.
Okay, if work that isn’t real isn’t fake what is it? The alternative to “real” is…?
Humans can survive without fuel and clothing. And we can certainly survive without truckers or cashiers or coal miners. We can live without farmers. Every modern occupation is expendable. Humans evolved hunting and gathering our food and carrying children our backs.
What is particularly physical about the work of truckers btw? Some truckers only drive and other people actually load and unload the goods they transport. Are those truckers less “real”? Is the work of a dentist less “real” than a warehouse worker because the dentist burns less calories in their labor?
And what tangible stuff do truckers produce? They move stuff with a vehicle, they don’t “produce” anything.
Do I care? No, not really, but it’s nonsense, and I tend to point out nonsense when I come across it. Especially nonsense that has a hint of moral evaluation.
Tangible work vs intangible work has more sense than real and… unreal work. But tangible and intangible work doesn’t actually map to the the occupations people typically apply to real and unreal. Truckers for example, they are using a machine to move physical objects. If I program a machine to move physical objects, using a machine (a computer, with keyboard) —how is that not “tangible” if what the truckers do is tangible? Something like teaching guitar… that is much more “intangible”.
Labor that requires a lot of physical exertion — eg professional mixed martial arts, shipping dock hands, life guards and infantry — vs labor that does not, Eg trucking, cab driving, and programming could be sensible categories. But people aren’t going to stress those from a political perspective, as they don’t map to the political divisions in the labor force.
You used punchcards? That’s hard labor. You may as well have been swinging an axe. I get exhausted having to wait for my IDE to provide its intellisense.
Indeed! He was the "first populist" in my lifetime. That's one reason why Trump reminds so many people of Reagan.
That's correct. The Reagan era was full of ambivalence about free trade and immigration. For all the support these had (much of it borrowed from Democrats, who were back then much bigger supporters of free trade and immigration than Republicans), there was still a significant strand in the Republican party of "national conservatism" descended from the nation-unifying Unionism and Whig Party of the 19th century and the Civil War. This definitely included strong support for the "working man" and his ability to support a family on one income. Thus the strong Republican support from the 1850s until the 1970s of tariffs and restrictions on immigration. It was not until the high inflation of the 1970s that American wages became disconnected from productivity and American families lost the ability to support themselves on one income.
(To give one, very important example, the extreme financial imbalances of the early 80s -- high if falling inflation and high US interest rates -- led to an overly strong dollar, putting American manufacturing at a big disadvantage. A major effort was undertaken to talk the dollar down -- the Plaza Accord -- and Reagan agreed to import quotas on Japanese and German cars, an example of "national conservatism" at work. The Japanese and German companies got around these, in part, by investing and building factories here, bringing their capital and hiring Americans. This move was possible only because Japan and Germany, once enemies, are part of the US-led geopolitical order -- not just trading partners but allies with common political and legal concepts. Compare with something similar if attempted by China -- arousing suspicion because apparently economic moves are rightly suspected as having an ulterior, hostile political agenda along with just economic motives. China has never accepted the US-led liberal international order, a point I hope everyone gets now.)
To bring it closer to our time, American manufacturing and the working class, while battered by the high inflation of the 1970s (a result of the Great Society, the Vietnam war, and abandonment of the gold standard) and the early 80s recessions, held their own through the early 1990s. It was the rise of neoliberalism and the US dollar-dominant world financial system after 1992 or so -- accompanied by NAFTA in 1994 and then China's entry into the WTO in early 2001 -- that really demolished American manufacturing. In the 1970s and 80s, during the Cold War, it had to compete with fellow developed countries like Germany and Japan, with similar labor standards and part of the US-led geopolitical system. Not so after 1994, when suddenly American companies and workers had to compete with countries not only much poorer, but bedeviled by corruption or repression. Don't mistake it: the neoliberal elite today wants to use Chinese-style repression to turn us into something like parts of Latin America.
This was perceived correctly in the early 90s by certain figures like Ross Perot (a Democrat and the true avatar of Trump -- Perot encouraged Trump to run multiple times) and Pat Buchanan. The reaction then of the Republican establishment to both was horror. Thus the Republican leadership gradually lost touch with its base. It's amazing that this period lasted as long as it did, from 1992 through the 2012 election. But it was doomed to end eventually, and it did with the rise of populist figures like Steve Bannon and Trump, and the revamped Breitbart.
Excellent exposition. Nicely expressed.
Reagan was very effective in his fight against big government and in his support of the workers. Remember, he fired the air traffic controllers who sought power.
And yes, this is a battle of classes, elites vs. working class. No one says this, everyone creates the division along race, gender, etc…. But the reality is, class is where this current cultural battle is being waged.
I agree with you about Reagan But the class thing was the traditional socialist gambit and it did not work well here because we really do have mobility both up and down - people make fortunes, people lose fortunes. And we had many methods to do so. Thus the need for division by other identifiers.
Several authors have discussed the phenomenon of todays culture where they concluded as I did, it is about class and they use other identifiers to hide their intent. Just look at the corporate America woke. They side with the various oppressed identity groups to carry favor and improve their bonafides, as well as to protect themselves from attack, and at the same time, they continue polluting, harsh labor practices, predatory pricing and other undesirable activities in order to achieve their profit targets.
I agree with your comments about corporate America feigning wokeness. And I'll clarify that class struggle has historically not worked here. I fear we are in uncharted territory though.
I agree.
Main Street not Wall Street.
I so hope you're right. The Republican Party is SO MUCH BETTER now than it was "before Trump". The young people that joined the party were/are so impressive. I am so glad that the Never Trumpers, the Lincoln Project and their ilk are gone. I do hope Trump is replaced, but the people he brought in greatly improved the party.
Actual explanation: You started to notice that what Democrats are telling you isn't true, but you haven't yet accepted that that was happening a long time ago, too.
I don't want him "replaced." He has a role. But it is as an elder statesman and not president. Enough of the septuagenarians.
I miss him, for realz.
Just as one has to be at least 35 to be president, I propose an upper age limit for the Presidency (And Congress?), perhaps 65 or 70 so that if elected to two terms the president would not exceed say 75 to 80 while in office
I agree with you on upper age limit. But, I think 80 is past the line.
I'm not sure you and I would agree on everything, but I was around for Reagan's elections too. We had a name for his blue collar supporters - Reagan Democrats - and the number of them rocked the political world in 1980 and '84.
Absolutely. They were not a major factor in 1980, but they were big in 1984 and 1988. Like Eisenhower in 1956 and Nixon in 1972, Reagan in 1984 won virtually in a landslide, taking over 40% of the Jewish vote and close to half of the Hispanic vote, to name two major Democratic voter blocs.
For younger Americans, it's hard to convey how much damage has been done by the Baby Boomers' takeover of American institutions since the 1990s and, for example, their "identity politics" propaganda. Those old enough to remember will know what I'm talking about. The transformation of the news media Batya presents in her book is one very important aspect of this trend with roots in the rise of the college-credentialed class since the 1960s.
My parents were lifelong Democrats. My dad was the precinct leader in our precinct, a perpetual delegate to the state convention, and in 1976 he was an alternate delegate at the national convention in NYC (he was determined to prevent Ted Kennedy from becoming the nominee). He was also a local USWA union leader--I spent a lot of time at the union hall in my childhood.
My parents voted for Reagan both times (so did I, in 1984: the first vote I ever cast).
My mom, lifelong Conservative and Catholic, knew Ted Kennedy to be the devil. Instead of telling me sweet bedtime stories, she'd tell me about Chappaquiddick. It's still unbelievable that actually happened, with the press lending him and his family cover. The Lion of the Senate? Puh-leeze. More like Satan with a neck brace.
Then the Bushes got in….
Ah yes, the New World Order ... remember that? :)
In the House, these centrist-conservatives were known as the “Blue Dogs” or “Blue Dog Democrats”.
On the other hand, and notwithstanding his infamous stump speech denouncing the nine scariest words (“I’m from the government and I’m here to help”), President Reagan famously expanded the federal government. In the end, our government is only as good as the people who elect it.
He was dealing with a Democrat congress. And much of his expansion was of the military to end the rot of the Ford and Carter years.
Actually, the federal government, except for the Pentagon, shrank in Reagan's first two years, when the Republicans and conservative Democrats (remember them?) were dominant in Congress. The federal govt didn't start to expand again in a major way until the last two years of Bush Sr., then Clinton, then Bush Jr. The expansion was different from the 1960s and involved many more mandates, contractors, and other indirect instruments.
Reagan had the Senate for his first couple of years, and with them he enacted a massive downsizing of government, except for the military. He declared a hiring freeze that lasted years. Even when the Dems took back the Congress, he still had enough popular support that they could barely get anything done without his signature.
And the rot of the USSR
I recall reading an article (Time or Newsweek) about the frustration of union bosses who were trying to convince their members to vote Democratic , or against Reagan, for his 2nd term. This quote, from a union worker, has always stuck with me: "I don't know what to tell you...With him (Reagan) we stand tall."
If you'd been at the 1986 celebration of the centennial of Lady Liberty in New York, you would understand every thing about that union worker's comment. It was a magical celebration of our country Led by the President and Mrs. Reagan. Everyone was proud to be an American.
The "real" decline in unions started in the late 1970s, when union power had rendered us uncompetitive in world markets for all sorts of manufactured goods - particularly automobiles. Compare the 1980 Chevy Citation with the 1980 Honda Accord - all you need to know.
That is when environmental protections kicked in.
You're absolutely right. The combination was deadly for U.S. manufacturing. Between the unions and the EPA, we had no shot.
You are absolutely correct. They priced themselves right out of the market. And, leading up to this, they had extensive help from the Kennedy administration which "collaborated" with big business and big labor to set wages and prices. This was one of the biggest leaps in the U.S. away from capitalism and toward corporatism.
The PATCO debacle occurred AFTER the wave of union power had crested. It simply crystallized the absurdity of unchecked (particularly public) unions in the eyes of the public.