This panel discussion will examine four different case studies where liberal reformers intersected with the left on both domestic and foreign policy issues between the late-1960s and the 1980s. Each of the panelists will focus on moments that showed great potential for a substantive liberal-left coalition, but also displayed meaningful divisions and limitations for radicals and reformers. Operating within a period of transformation for the Democratic Party, these stories offer up valuable lessons for present and future efforts to bridge the gaps between liberals and the left.

Michael Brenes’s paper will explore the left-liberal coalition behind full employment, or a job guarantee, in the “long 1970s.” By examining the broad coalition of organizations and individuals who backed a job guarantee in the 1970s, this paper suggests that Humphrey was behind the times on full employment—that the Left had greater, more ambitious ideas for a full employment program that also offered Americans a basic income, universal health care, and family assistance alongside a job guarantee. I argue that the full employment bill Humphrey sponsored—which became the Humphrey-Hawkins Act—displayed Humphrey’s longstanding unwillingness to embrace ideas that could have broadened the coalition behind a job guarantee.

Marisa Chappell’s paper will explore moments of cooperation and collaboration between the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) and liberal Democrats in the 1970s and early 1980s. Throughout its forty-year history, ACORN worked with liberals in advocacy organizations, foundations, and the Democratic Party. By highlighting these moments of ACORN-liberal collaboration from the mid-1970s to the early 1980s, this paper will illuminate the promises that such alliances held in this moment of contest over the Democratic Party’s future as well as the sharp limits to what they could accomplish at a national level.

The Moratorium to the End the War in Vietnam (1969) was the product of a moment when antiwar liberals began to interact with left wing activists in ways that challenged the ideological boundaries of the Cold War. The results were the Moratorium demonstrations which mobilized millions of Americans to oppose the war. Michael Koncewicz’s paper will offer up a detailed history of Moratorium demonstrations, and present them as a crucial flash point for liberal-left politics during the Vietnam-era. Through studying the rise and fall of the moratorium movement, one can better understand the successes and roadblocks that antiwar activists faced in their efforts to strengthen the links between liberals with the left.

Danielle L. Wiggins’s paper will investigate how Andrew Young sought to triangulate between progressive activists, who continued to demand full employment, and the city’s growth coalition by conflating growth with job opportunity. Ultimately, this paper provides new insights into the rightward turn of the Democratic Party in the 1980s by illustrating how key rhetorical and policy shifts were first tested and contested on the local level, often under black leadership.