California Crucible. Jonathan Bell
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POLITICS AND CULTURE
IN MODERN AMERICA
Series Editors:
Margot Canaday, Glenda Gilmore, Michael Kazin, and
Thomas J. Sugrue
Volumes in the series narrate and analyze political and social
change in the broadest dimensions from 1865 to the present,
including ideas about the ways people have sought and wielded
power in the public sphere and the language and institutions
of politics at all levels—local, national, and transnational.
The series is motivated by a desire to reverse the fragmentation
of modern U.S. history and to encourage synthetic perspectives
on social movements and the state, on gender, race, and labor,
and on intellectual history and popular culture.
CALIFORNIA
CRUCIBLE
The Forging of
Modern American Liberalism
JONATHAN BELL
UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA PRESS
PHILADELPHIA
Copyright © 2012 University of Pennsylvania Press
All rights reserved. except for brief quotations used for
purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book
may be reproduced in any form by any means without written
permission from the publisher.
Published by
University of Pennsylvania Press
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Bell, Jonathan, 1976–
California crucible : the forging of modern American
liberalism / Jonathan Bell.
p. cm. — (Politics and culture in modern America)
Includes bibliographical references and index,
ISBN 978-0-8122-4387-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
1. Liberalism—California—History—20th century.
2. Liberalism—United States—History—20th century.
3. California—Politics and government—20th century. I Title.
II. Series: Politics and culture in modern America.
JS451.C25B34 2012
320.51'309794—dc23 2011032476
For Julia and Ray
CONTENTS
Introduction: Placing California in Post-World War II American Politics
Chapter 1. Politics and Party in California at Mid-Century
Chapter 2. Building the Democratic Party in the 1940s
Chapter 3. The Stevenson Effect
Chapter 5. Turning Point: California Politics in the 1950s
Chapter 7. Democratic Politics and the Brown Administration
Chapter 8. Welfare Reform and the Idea of the Family
Chapter 9. Culture Wars, Politics, and Power
Chapter 10. The Legacy of the Democratic Party Renaissance
Epilogue: Liberal Politics in California in an “Era of Limits”
INTRODUCTION
Placing California in Post-World War II American Politics
In April 1959, cricket levering, legislative chairwoman of democratic clubs in the suburb of Claremont and the surrounding neighborhoods of the Forty-Ninth assembly district in the northeastern corner of Los Angeles County, wrote a memo to fellow club organizers. Giddy from the landslide victories of gubernatorial candidate Pat Brown and other democratic legislative candidates in the 1958 elections, levering wanted to maintain the momentum that had helped bring about those victories through tireless precinct walking, leaflet distribution, rally organizing, and voter registration drives. Those who met in living rooms and poolside backyards in the Forty-ninth district democratic clubs discussed issues like the legitimacy of capital punishment, wider access to health care, the Cuban revolution, and the civil rights movement, often taking stances far to the left of many of their fellow citizens in Southern California.
Across the state, Democratic clubs like those in the Claremont area used meetings to provide a social focus for their rapidly growing communities, to take stands on major issues of the day, and to lobby their elected representatives to reflect their political concerns in legislative debates. “let us not lose sight of the importance of this task,” levering wrote. “We have helped to elect a Governor who is putting the weight of his office behind a legislative program that is unprecedented in California. We who are the working democrats now have an obligation and responsibility to keep ourselves informed on the issues, and to support that program.”1
This intersection of grassroots organizing, left-of-center ideology, and organizational politics in the reshaping of California's political terrain between World War II and the end of the 1970s is the subject of this book. In this period, California was not only the fastest growing state in the union and one of the world's largest economies in these decades, but was also the site of significant political change in the 1950s and 1960s that illustrates a broader national process of ideological