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Article: The Changing Dynamics of American Liberalism: Paul Douglas and the Elections of 1948
- Article from:
- Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society
- Article date:
- January 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright Illinois State Historical Society Winter 2003/2004. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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The question of what happened to the reform impetus in American politics in the wake of the New Deal and World War II remains an area of intense historical debate. The question of what happened to the reform thrust of the New Deal has hardly been ignored in the historiography on post-World War II politics, but the fate of American liberalism is usually seen as springing from events and trends in place before 1945.1 The present article will seek to show that a powerful forum for social democratic ideas existed in the United States at the end of the war, and that the emergence of the Cold War determined the fate of postwar American liberalism and conservatism to an extent underestimated in ...