believed that government is run by the "big interests" and favored federal action designed to reduce the gap between rich and poor, preferably by "raising the taxes of wealthy families." The same people, however, rejected the values liberalism had come to stand for and voted for right‐ wing candidates who denounced the liberal media, liberal bureaucrats and social planners, liberal do-gooders, and liberal exponents of cultural relativism and sexual permissiveness.

The rise of "neoliberalism" in the mid-seventies made it easier than ever for the right to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of populism. In 1974, two years after George McGovern's disastrous campaign for the presidency, the Democrats rebounded from defeat by gaining four governorships, four new seats in the Senate, and forty-nine congressional seats. Most of those elected in this Democratic resurgence at the state and congressional level—politicians like Gary Hart, John Culver, Dale Bumpers, Jerry Brown, Ella Grasso, Richard Lamm, Tom Downey, Christopher Dodd, Toby Moffett, Paul Simon, Paul Tsongas, Les AuCoin, James Blanchard, and Tim Wirth—came out of the "new politics" of the sixties and early seventies. They were graduates of the Peace Corps, the War on Poverty, the antiwar movement, and the McGovern campaign. Their opposition to the war in Vietnam, their commitment to feminism and civil rights, their impatience with the "special interests" that allegedly controlled the party (including labor), their enthusiasm for advanced technology, and their emphasis on professional competence as opposed to ideology distinguished them from older liberals like Edward Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey. Toby Moffett of Connecticut characterized the congressional class of '74, without irony or disapproval, as "very suburban." Economic growth and education impressed neoliberals as the nation's prime concerns. "If the U.S. economy does well," Tsongas explained, "a rising tide lifts all boats." On the other hand, the "class-warfare context" of old-fashioned party politics, in the words of Les AuCoin of Oregon, divided the nation and diverted attention from the technical problems that had to be solved if the United States was to regain its economic leadership of the world. Attacks on business were counterproductive. "The American people do not buy ... a class warfare political argument," AuCoin declared. "The American people, at this point of our history, are looking for leadership that argues for economic growth strategies."

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