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Who could be a "Democratic Reagan?"

I've always gone for Peter Graves as the Democratic expy of Reagan, i believe there were a couple of attempts to get him to run for elected office but he wasn't interested. I think he fits the bill a little better than an A-lister, which Reagan himself wasn't.

Burt Lancaster another for his long history of activism.

Sort of deliberately missing the main point of the thread, but I do think "Democratic Reagan" is a tough one to rate, career-wise, because conservative actors just out of rarity tend to be B-listers (or C-listers, today) but also because liberal actors of all lists seem reluctant to actually run for stuff - I think there is a Nixon-to-China element of only right-wingers really having the leeway to surmount the baggage of a Hollywood career.

Franken, sure, but how did his career turn out exactly?
 
Sort of deliberately missing the main point of the thread, but I do think "Democratic Reagan" is a tough one to rate, career-wise, because conservative actors just out of rarity tend to be B-listers (or C-listers, today) but also because liberal actors of all lists seem reluctant to actually run for stuff - I think there is a Nixon-to-China element of only right-wingers really having the leeway to surmount the baggage of a Hollywood career.

Franken, sure, but how did his career turn out exactly?

Is it a Hollywood career, or is it more precisely the celebrity lifestyle?

Warren Beatty and Robert Redford occassionally crop up in lists. Well, they were both close friends of Gary Hart. And, well, I'll just link this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Beatty#Before_marriage

We know how well the party lifestyle worked for Hart and Ted Kennedy.
 
Is it a Hollywood career, or is it more precisely the celebrity lifestyle?

Warren Beatty and Robert Redford occassionally crop up in lists. Well, they were both close friends of Gary Hart. And, well, I'll just link this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Beatty#Before_marriage

We know how well the party lifestyle worked for Hart and Ted Kennedy.

Oh, absolutely - and Trump is the obvious example to cite for the other side of the coin.

That said, given Republicans spent eight years trying to monster Obama as someone who had never had a “real job” despite being a senator, state senator, lawyer, and constitutional law professor, I do think the literal fact of having worked as an actor would also be a bigger issue for anyone with a (D) next to their name than for Reagan.
 
Oh, absolutely - and Trump is the obvious example to cite for the other side of the coin.

That said, given Republicans spent eight years trying to monster Obama as someone who had never had a “real job” despite being a senator, state senator, lawyer, and constitutional law professor, I do think the literal fact of having worked as an actor would also be a bigger issue for anyone with a (D) next to their name than for Reagan.

I don't disagree that LA Hollywood Liberal would absolutely be as predictable a charge as night follows day, but bear in mind that the Republicans have charged every single nominee since Dukakis (And plenty beforehand) with being an elitist, culturally alien closet radical. So that's par for course, it's not something that would suddenly spring into life for a former actor.

(I'm assuming the hypothetical nominee would be elected to something first, if we're going by the Reagan analogue)

I think the most likely D actor president would be someone older than Reagan, honestly.
 
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Sort of deliberately missing the main point of the thread, but I do think "Democratic Reagan" is a tough one to rate, career-wise, because conservative actors just out of rarity tend to be B-listers (or C-listers, today) but also because liberal actors of all lists seem reluctant to actually run for stuff - I think there is a Nixon-to-China element of only right-wingers really having the leeway to surmount the baggage of a Hollywood career.

Franken, sure, but how did his career turn out exactly?

Should be worth to mention that back when Reagan was in show business, among actors and other people working in film, being conservative and/or Republican wasn't as uncommon as it is today. Jimmy Stewart, Cecil B. DeMille, Jerry Lewis, John Wayne, Louis B. Mayer, John Ford, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, and Doris Day were all life-long conservative Republicans.

If anything, Reagan kind of stands out a little by virtue of not having been a life-long Republican, and for pretty much all of his acting career was a registered Democrat.
 
Should be worth to mention that back when Reagan was in show business, among actors and other people working in film, being conservative and/or Republican wasn't as uncommon as it is today. Jimmy Stewart, Cecil B. DeMille, Jerry Lewis, John Wayne, Louis B. Mayer, John Ford, Gary Cooper, Clark Gable, Bing Crosby, and Doris Day were all life-long conservative Republicans.

If anything, Reagan kind of stands out a little by virtue of not having been a life-long Republican, and for pretty much all of his acting career was a registered Democrat.

Oh, that conservative undercurrent persisted a good deal later than the '50s - I think the biggest name actor to make it in politics (as opposed to the biggest name politician to make it in acting) is pretty clearly Ahnold, unless one really fixates on that time Eastwood was mayor of somewhere, and it's only post-Bush that it's become outright unrespectable to be a Republican in Hollywood.

But a visible undercurrent is still not, well, a current, and I think you'd have a hard time asserting that there was ever more than a significant fraction of conservative actors - which, considering how ruby red California was back in the day, is really rather impressive.
 
I feel like Paul Newman is a really good fit. Sort of like a progressive version of Reagan. Maybe he becomes governor of California by defeating Reagan in 1970? Reagan only won by seven points, could Newman have come closer? Alternatively he could run in 1974?
 
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If you want someone who was a popular actor in the Eighties, is publicly liberal, and has a history of political activism that could feasibly be turned into a run for office, I've got two names for you:

Alan Alda and Rob Reiner. Hell, they've both even got alliterative names.

I saw him mentioned earlier, but I also toyed around with the idea of a "Sen. Bruce Springsteen (D-NJ)" a few years ago.
 
Yeah, pretty much. The post that I was reacting to said this:



...and my idea was essentially, no, I don't think you can point to a backlash over civil rights as being the key to explaining why America turned rightwards. Did it have an effect, was there a backlash on civil rights? Sure. But there were countless other factors in play, and I would say that for the most part those factors were global in nature.

I think the point that you're not quite addressing is that while the global monetarist consensus is probably either inevitable or at least the product of forces well outside of US politics (and a rightward shift on economics in a monetarist direction), that doesn't need to be yoked to the US-Republican brand of socially reactionary, anti-anti-racist, and extremist anti-public sector and public assistance* politics.

*In the sense that the Republicans have tended to oppose the public sector and public assistance/welfare even when those are compatible with a monetarist lassez-faire framework or even desirable within them. E.g. the fact that there is a fairly good monetarist/lassez-faire case for UHC and moderately generous employment benefits where those increase labor market efficiency, or supporting strong environmental regulation when transaction costs and failing to price in externalities make it far too hard for private actors to achieve a Socially and Economically Optimal Pollution Level.

EDIT: For example, you could have the dominant form of politics in the US look much closer to Blairism or third way centrism, with the Overton window shifted somewhat to the left and the Republican party constrained from going as far right as it has.
 
Or put another way: its' very hard to imagine a US that doesn't go to the right politically in some fashion where monetarism reigns, public spending drops, and there's a general assumption that the government should leave the economy to itself and at best make modest market-centered interventions when markets are not behaving efficiently or productively, or one where a GND with massive public expenditure is not politically doable in the 90s. It's very easy to imagine a US where abortion simply never becomes a politically salient issue and environmentalism and climate change remain areas of broad bipartisan "we all agree that *something* needs to be done it's just a question of what that *something* is.
 
I think the point that you're not quite addressing is that while the global monetarist consensus is probably either inevitable or at least the product of forces well outside of US politics (and a rightward shift on economics in a monetarist direction), that doesn't need to be yoked to the US-Republican brand of socially reactionary, anti-anti-racist, and extremist anti-public sector and public assistance* politics.

*In the sense that the Republicans have tended to oppose the public sector and public assistance/welfare even when those are compatible with a monetarist lassez-faire framework or even desirable within them. E.g. the fact that there is a fairly good monetarist/lassez-faire case for UHC and moderately generous employment benefits where those increase labor market efficiency, or supporting strong environmental regulation when transaction costs and failing to price in externalities make it far too hard for private actors to achieve a Socially and Economically Optimal Pollution Level.

EDIT: For example, you could have the dominant form of politics in the US look much closer to Blairism or third way centrism, with the Overton window shifted somewhat to the left and the Republican party constrained from going as far right as it has.

Or put another way: its' very hard to imagine a US that doesn't go to the right politically in some fashion where monetarism reigns, public spending drops, and there's a general assumption that the government should leave the economy to itself and at best make modest market-centered interventions when markets are not behaving efficiently or productively, or one where a GND with massive public expenditure is not politically doable in the 90s. It's very easy to imagine a US where abortion simply never becomes a politically salient issue and environmentalism and climate change remain areas of broad bipartisan "we all agree that *something* needs to be done it's just a question of what that *something* is.

I agree. As I said months ago, the US and the UK were exceptions. Other Western countries kept more mixed economies and larger welfare states.
 
I think the point that you're not quite addressing is that while the global monetarist consensus is probably either inevitable or at least the product of forces well outside of US politics (and a rightward shift on economics in a monetarist direction), that doesn't need to be yoked to the US-Republican brand of socially reactionary, anti-anti-racist, and extremist anti-public sector and public assistance* politics.

*In the sense that the Republicans have tended to oppose the public sector and public assistance/welfare even when those are compatible with a monetarist lassez-faire framework or even desirable within them. E.g. the fact that there is a fairly good monetarist/lassez-faire case for UHC and moderately generous employment benefits where those increase labor market efficiency, or supporting strong environmental regulation when transaction costs and failing to price in externalities make it far too hard for private actors to achieve a Socially and Economically Optimal Pollution Level.

EDIT: For example, you could have the dominant form of politics in the US look much closer to Blairism or third way centrism, with the Overton window shifted somewhat to the left and the Republican party constrained from going as far right as it has.

I certainly would not rule out the possibility of the Democratic Party adopting a position reasonably reminicent of the Australian Labor Party in the 1980s. That could make for a somewhat interesting timeline if handled correctly, say, I dunno, have Ford win in 1976, and then the Democrats win in a massive landslide in 1980, and, err-... Well, I leave the rest up to you.

Now, the conversation that you are quoting from took place three months ago, so forgive me if my memory is a bit foggy on the details, but the issue I was trying to address was notion that the shift in a more monetarist/neoliberal/etc. direction politically in the United States in the 80s could be reduced down to the tremendous personal popularity of Ronald Reagan, and general public dissatisfaction with Jimmy Carter. My point was that Reagan was merely riding a wave that was already there, he did not bring about the wave, nor did Jimmy Carter in as far as that is concerned. And my point was further that what with this being a global trend, it did not make sense to ascribe it either to white backlash against the Civil Rights victories of the 1960s.

But sure, it is perfectly possible for the Democrats to be the ones to establish the new monetarist consensus.
 
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