I’m not in a position to read the included link(s), but I think it interesting to note McGovern’s involvement in the Democrats’ shift. It was George Meany and the AFL-CIO that turned against McGovern, as I recall, and not the other way around. He had made an anti-Labor Senate vote on a bill whose fate was predetermined—we are told, in order to curry favor in his very Republican home State—but this was used against him in the primaries. Conversely, McGovern’s young volunteers did not even try to appear part of society, as McCarthy’s had four years prior, and were self-consciously alienating. As well, an obvious example of McGovern’s followers in power was the “Atari Democrat” Gary Hart. Nevertheless, I feel it’s interesting, if not questionable, to portray McGovern as the fulcrum that pushed the Democrats away from New Deal politics.
It was the McGovern and his commission that removed Labor Unions from their structural position within the Democratic Party and thus beginning the slow dismemberment of the New Deal coalition. Furthermore, it was Jimmy Carter that presided over the beginning of dismantling labor unions in.private companies. Relevant article:
JIMMY CARTER AND ORGANIZED LABOR’S DECLINE
Jimmy Carter was the first Democratic president that began to view labor unions as a constituency he could ignore while simultaneously taking advantage of their vote:
It's stuff like this why you have this current battle within the Democratic Party between the Sanders and Clinton factions. This long overdue reckoning of the Democratic Partys faliure at being a proper left wing party and not this centrist charade that treats it's voting coalitions as nothing but a body to pull a lever in the voting booth
