The following article stub  from “The Long, Slow Death of Social Democracy – Reconnecting with voters is going to be extremely difficult for the Brahmin Left” by Ruy Teixeira, author of major works of political analysis and non-resident senior fellow of the American Enterprise Institute, is cross-posted from Commonplace:

For three decades, social democracy was the most successful product of a working-class movement that had long contained both revolutionary and reformist elements. Between 1946 and 1973, United States GDP grew by 3.8% annually, and by 2.4% on a per-capita basis. Unemployment averaged 4.8%, and real median family incomes rose at a rate of 2.8% per year, more than doubling over the time period. What’s more, this growth was stronger at the bottom and relatively weaker at the top, meaning income inequality fell substantially.

The Keynesian economic consensus in Western industrial democracies during this period produced strong economic growth, low unemployment, rapidly rising living standards, and government action to provide protection and security for the average citizen.

Reflecting these positive developments, the social democratic-oriented Democratic Party received high levels of electoral support. In the six elections between 1932 and 1948, Democratic presidential support averaged 55%. After the liberal Republican Dwight Eisenhower won two terms in the 1950s, the Democrats again averaged 55% presidential support in 1960 and 1964. And during almost all of this period, the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress.

But as the 1970s dawned, three factors converged and reinforced one another to undermine social democracy—and eventually lead to its death. First, the social democratic economic model lost effectiveness; second, the social democratic base got smaller; and third, the social democratic influence within the Left weakened.

Let’s start with the economic model. With the end of the post-war Bretton Woods system and the OPEC oil price shock of 1973, inflationary pressures that had been building up inside the U.S. and other advanced countries could no longer be contained, producing high inflation rates and high unemployment, or “stagflation.” Social democrats failed to develop an alternative to or extension of the postwar Keynesian system, leading to the end of the Keynesian consensus.

More here.