Read on Twitter
Between this and that Ed Markey ad with footage from the 70s, I'm getting an interesting pre-Reagan vibe from the current Democratic Party. Nostalgia is a powerful emotion, and it's not always or necessarily reactionary. https://twitter.com/DrBiden/status/1295402572463906816
The distinction between reflective and restorative nostalgia is useful here. https://twitter.com/SethCotlar/status/987071245257617408?s=20
All politics, to some extent, is always oriented toward the past...because the past is the repository of the only evidence and experiences we have at our disposal to make sense of our present and the future. We are always talking about the past when we talk about the future.
I mean, "The Green New Deal" invokes a set of associations with FDR and the modern state the US constructed from the 1930s on and which the GOP has sought to dismantle from the 1960's on. It's no less nostalgic than "Make America Great Again," but differently so.
There are plenty of good reasons to be reflectively (not restoratively) nostalgic for the culture and politics of the 1970s. Children's Educational Television, for example, was an incredibly radical and fascinating (if also imperfect) experiment. https://www.amazon.com/Sunny-Days-Childrens-Television-Revolution/dp/1501137808
Just as the New Deal is merely an inspirational touchstone for contemporary climate activists, not some static model they seek to just reconstruct in toto, American culture pre-Reagan is also a reservoir of fascinating and viable paths not taken.
So anyway, when you see this 70s nostalgia (or New Deal nostalgia) being activated by progressive politicians, don't just dismiss it as the Democratic equivalent to "Make America Great Again."
Humorless and literalist forms of nostalgia do indeed suck. But they are not the only forms in which the emotion of nostalgia can manifest and have political pull. Here's the book that informed what I'm saying here. It's really interesting. https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Roots_of_Radicalism/mJXkLq03jPoC?hl=en&gbpv=1&pg=PP1&printsec=frontcover
To give another contemporary example, a lot of people are suddenly feeling nostalgic for the good old Postal Service, a very old, venerable, and not particularly sexy institution. It doesn't make you a foolish luddite to think the Postal Service has a still vital role to play.
Obama caught a lot of guff for comparing himself to Reagan in 2008, but what he meant was that he wanted to be a transformational, paradigm-shifting president like Reagan was. He didn't share Reagan's politics, he wanted to repeal Reaganism. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/obama-compares-himself-to_n_81835?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly90LmNvL3FReDg4ZzhEdGk_YW1wPTE&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAAaBKlXSwmGl7JIUaPt0iqhJJ9ryb69RUMYrfW3P8Y5hXn_rQcvyb26-82EsgkWYSAiBSvRqgaeLNGLN5V1wiE-IAFrq2AIzNW1DFuTh5XCr2pJsnlaWd7xi1qs2GKViEOAEr7Lfe8p9ih59iMuYCWrweMHVW8z-98Ihu3fyX9yL
Ultimately, Obama's presidency did not fundamentally shift the paradigm of American politics...or at least, it's too early to say if it did. Perhaps he (and the political aspirations he inspired) started to move the needle in a more progressive direction. The future will tell.
But any progressive American future will be a future that will have decentered Reaganite anti-statism as the reigning paradigm of American politics. It will return us to a time when we thought of government as a positive agent for good in the world. Like, arguably, the 70s.
So anyway, that's my charitable read on why we're seeing so many visual throwbacks to the 70s coming out of the Democratic Party...and also why those throwbacks often land on progressives with a feeling of pleasure. No necessary need to feel guilty about it.
