This is your brain on presentism. This is your brain on ahistoricism.

Because voters in 2008/2012/2016 didn't have a choice about neoliberalism in recent elections, that means they never had a choice.

Yet, I am pretty sure Sean doesn't think FDR or LBJ were neoliberals? https://twitter.com/SeanMcCarthyCom/status/1309570847561134089

There was, quite objectively, a time in which social democracy was advancing in US politics, and then a time in which it basically maintained power. This period, in fact, lasted almost half a century. Kind of an important historical fact

American voters--and, initially, that meant almost entirely white voters! white workers!--actually did make the choice to abandon liberal economics in favor of social democracy. They made that choice in the 30s, when their class interest became more clear in the Depression

But! When they first made this choice, there was very little cross-pressure from culture. FDR did not represent a major break from the racist status quo. His opponents tried to cast him in that light, but he wasn't threatening Jim Crow. His New Deal excluded most Black workers

It was a limited social democracy, of course, but for white workers, they had a choice and they made the choice to embrace social democracy over economic liberalism.

And there was some cultural cross-pressure, but not much, so it was relatively an easy choice. Still, good.

Then, over time, cross-cultural pressures developed, as the party of social democracy also became gradually the party of anti-racism (to the limited extent that any US party has ever been--but, still, enough to be a relevant distinction to voters, Black and white alike)

The social democratic coalition evolved. It began to incorporate Black workers into the voting coalition. It began to include them, only marginally at first, in social democratic benefits.

But then you get to JFK. Who achieved little, but promised enough to make some white workers feel threatened. And then, LBJ. Not that he was the creator or enlightened grantor of civil liberties, but he did bow to the pressure of Black citizens demanding political agency

Now, suddenly, the cross-pressure was incredibly stark. The social democratic coalition had acceded to Black revolutionary demands to end Jim Crow. It had bowed to the demands of Black people to be legitimate political participants.

In some ways, the fact that the Democrats didn't *lead* this charge so much as *follow* the demands of Black liberation movements, was even more threatening to white voters. It meant that the agency lay with Black "agitators", more than white politicians

The precedent of organized movement of Black people demanding and *getting* major changes to the legal and economic order--the material relations of how labor and the political superstructure were organized--was terrifying to many whites. Where would it end?

The Democrats still represented social democracy. LBJ was the Great Society, the War on Poverty, the architect of Medicare and Medicaid--the very thing that today is the defining priority of social democrats in America today!

LBJ spent three billion on the war on poverty. His Economic Opportunity Act lowered poverty levels from 17% in 1964 to 11% in 9 years. Millions of people!

He expanded food stamps, he expanded welfare, consumer protections, government-run rail projects, rent relief!

For social democrats to suggest that a choice between the Democratic Party of LBJ and the Republican Party of Nixon gave no choice to voters about the economic trajectory of the country, is simply false.