Radicals in Power The New Left Experience in Office [Hardcover]

This book argues persuasively that the New Left did not end when SNCC, SDS, and the Black Panthers crashed and burned. Radicalism continued in electoral form in locations like Berkeley, Madison, Ann Arbor, and the State of Vermont, achieving significant reforms. What held these efforts together, Davin proposes, was a political culture left of liberalism but not quite socialism that he calls Left Populism, and compares to the rhetoric and music of the 1930s. Overall, he contrasts electoral New Leftism with the historic practice of Left parties in the United States to run local candidates solely for 'educational' purposes, hence to be unprepared to govern when their candidates win.Focusing on a wide variety of leftists who have been elected to office, Eric Davins Radicals in Power challenges the predominant view that the New Left disintegrated after the 1960s. His work should provoke a reconsideration of the New Lefts legacy and the possibilities for a locally-based populist movement today.Davin (Univ. of Pittsburgh) argues that historians have overlooked 1960s70s radicals' forays into electoral politics, where he sees both traction and meaningful political change for the Left. He largely focuses on college towns and the election of student radicals to a variety of city councils, particularly analyzing left-leaning third parties such as the Peace and Freedom Party (California) and the Human Rights Party (Michigan) and their members' transition from opposition to incorporation into the Democratic Party. Davin demonstrates the importance, possibilities, and limitations of local politics. Summing Up: Recommended. Graduate students, faculty.Davin has been interested in this topic for forty years, and during the 1970s and 1980s he interviewed most of the people who won the races that are covered in the book. A great deal of the book consists of the interviews. If he hadnt conducted those interviews in the past, the book could not have been written, because many of thlS,