Fifty Years Ago

[stoutfellow]

Fifty years ago, the United States Senate included the following people: Clark Gruening (D-AK), Carl Hayden (D-AZ), Frank Church (D-ID), Vance Hartke and Birch Bayh (D-IN), Stuart Symington (D-MO), Mike Mansfield and Lee Metcalf (D-MT), Fred Harris and Mike Monroney (D-OK), George McGovern (D-SD), Albert Gore Sr (D-TN), Ralph Yarborough (D-TX), Frank Moss (D-UT), and Gale McGee (D-WY). Most of those were solid liberals, and even the Southerners - Symington, Gore, Yarborough - were progressives. All of their states are dark red nowadays; the small handful of Democratic senators they've elected in the last decade have been firmly on the right flank of the party.

Times change. They will change again. Another fifty years....

Comments

[mmegaera]

I certainly hope they do. And sooner than in fifty years, thanks.

[stoutfellow]

Things can happen fast; every one of the senators I named was out of office by 1981. (Church, Hartke, and McGovern were swept out in the 1980 wave.) So, maybe fifteen years? We're due for a realignment, and one may be in progress....

[mmegaera]

From your fingertips to TPTB's eyes.