Irritation

Before the election I was an avid reader of a fair number of political blogs, but now not so much.  This has been frustrating me, and so I've been trying to figure out why they are so much less satisfying.  The conclusion I've come to is that both these bloggers and the Democratic party leadership suffer from similar, and probably related, problems.  Given this, looking to poli-bloggers for answers on how to fix Democratic flaws is a largely futile exercise.

One theme that I keep seeing up is the idea that Democrats either lack vision or lack a clear way to market whatever vision it is that they might have.  This belief prompts all sorts of discussions about what that Democratic vision might be, or what snappy marketing strategies would be most effective in getting the message across to voters.  I find this irritating on multiple levels, but there are two aspects of this meme that I want to whack at in particular.

First, it's not about the "vision."  It's about the Democratic leadership's persistent inability or unwillingness to stand up for the needs and values of its constituents.  Often this is glossed as wanting to "not stoop to their level" or "maintaining the dignity of the office" or "encouraging cordial relations among colleagues."  In other words, it is more important to be "nice" or "polite" than to defend one's interests.  Aside from the doormat-like quality of this attitude -- which means always giving up one's own needs in the vague hope of getting some sort of pat on the head in the future -- it sets up a false dichotomy.  As anyone who has read Miss Manners knows full well, it is perfectly possible to be polite and still stand up firmly in defense of one's values and those one represents.  Indeed, it would be rude not to -- rude to one's constituents, and rude to one's colleagues on the same side of the aisle.  There's a reason why Dean and Obama inspire devotion on the part of the liberal public, and it's not just their messages.  It's that both men clearly demonstrate that they are passionately committed to their supporters and their causes.  So enough about the vision already.  What we need more is conviction and courage.

Second, the "branding" part of the argument is irritating.  Among other things, it is top-down, paternalistic, and condescending.  It reeks of the "elitism" charge so often hurled at liberals and progressives.  It assumes that the general public consists of commercial-stupified sheep who will only respond to sound bites and flashy messages.  No doubt this does describe part of the population, but does one really want this part to form the base of one's political party?  I think not.  What you want for your core constituency is, again, people of conviction and courage.  Now, people like this are not going to suddenly line up behind a politician simply because he or she has a snappy slogan and nifty logo.  They are going to support a person who understands their values and needs and is willing to go toe to toe in defense of them.  While much of the popular perception of marketing is along the lines of "build it and they will come" -- that is, design a splashy ad campaign and people will suddenly develop a burning desire for the product -- in reality most marketers look to the people first, learn what they want or need, and then figure out how to use their ads to link those needs to the product. 

In other words, an ad campaign for the Democrats is worthless without a clear understanding of the constituencies being targeted, and without a strong commitment to meeting their needs after the election.

This brings me to a second category of arguments I keep seeing that are also irritating.  I think of them as the "reach out" debates.  We would have won, the argument runs, if only we had reached out to the religious/Nascar dads/soccer moms/Log Cabin Republicans/centrist voters, etc.  Now, I think the basic impulse is correct -- identify groups that you could serve as a political party and reach out to them.  The problem is, the groups Democrats -- and political bloggers -- keep holding up as desirable targets are all defined by either the media or by the right.  This strategy is, in a word, stupid.  Trying to reach out to groups already partially (or fully) claimed by the opposition party is only a viable strategy if you are positive that your own groups are fully in your camp.  Otherwise you spread yourself so thin that it becomes a choice between Republicans, Republican-lite, and a smattering of third parties.  Before the Democrats start worrying about Nascar dads, they need to ask themselves what their own desired core groups might be, and make damn sure that they will not defect to a third party out of frustration with Democratic wimpiness and being forever taken for granted. 

This is one reason, I suspect, that many Democrats are still obsessing about Ralph Nader, particularly his 2000 run when he and the Green Party "stole" "their" votes.  Basically, they like to believe that progressive and liberal voters must "naturally" vote Democratic, even when the party goes searching ever more rightward for new voters.  The thing is, there is absolutely no justification for believing such a thing in the absence of concerted, clear efforts to seek out those left-wing groups and demonstrate a party-wide commitment to addressing those groups' concerns. 

I was thinking about this in particular when I visited the website of the newly formed "Progressive Democrats."  Their basic plan is to reinfuse progressive issues into the Democratic agenda, with an emphasis on environmental, social justice, and civil and gender rights concerns.  Now, in a sense, this is a good idea, but, reading their list of objectives, I couldn't help thinking that this was not so much a re-envisioning of the Democratic Party as a form of "Green-lite."  What made me even more suspicious of their agenda, and highly sceptical of its ultimate success, was their somewhat haughty dismissal of third parties.  This is stupid on two counts.  First, left-wing third parties are potentially valuable allies -- as the Greens demonstrated this year by advocating that Greens vote for Kerry and Edwards instead of the Green presidential ticket.  Second, the Progressive Democrats are in a damned if you do, damned if you don't position relative to both third parties and the mainstream Democrats.  If they lean heavily on the progressive end, they will find themselves competing with left-wing third parties for third-party voters while still bearing the handicap of being lumped with mainstream Democrats.  Such voters, if faced with a ballot running a Green candidate and a Democratic candidate, will probably be reluctant to trust the Democratic "brand" knowing that the brand includes right-center politicians as well as "progressive" ones, and thus unlikely to jump party lines for that candidate.  If the Progressive Democrats instead focus on pulling the mainstream Democrats leftward, then they will need the assistance of those left-wing third parties to demonstrate that a shift away from the center-right is a viable strategy.  Finally, if the Progressive Democrats fail to sway their Democratic fellows, they may well find themselves fading into irrelevancy, losing voters to third parties, or forming a third party themselves.  As I say, dismissing third parties is stupid, yet the Democrats and their supporters seem to have made a virtual fetish of it.

Which brings us finally to the question of why both Democratic leaders and most political bloggers seem unable to come up with better approaches to the problem of regaining national political power.  I think it is because they are too focused on swaying individual voters or peeling them away from right-defined constituencies.  They have internalized "every vote counts" to such a degree that they have forgotten that there are such things as progressive groups.  Moreover, they have succumbed to the notion that politicians determine policy and then try to sell it to voters.  Both approaches are the result of, indeed, elitism, in the sense that both political bloggers and Democratic leaders refuse (or are unable) to believe that ordinary people are capable of acting collectively in their own interest, that it is possible or even desirable for leadership to be defined as responding to the needs of the group instead of as coercing the group to follow the leader where he or she wants to go.  There's a reason why MoveOn was -- and still is -- such a success, the same reason that the Deaniacs and the Naderites were so energetic and persistent.  It is because they were supported in their belief that they were just as much political actors as their political agents in Washington.

It is ironic, to say the least, that it is the "Democrats" who do the poorest job understanding and analyzing genuinely democratic political action.  Until they learn to be truly democratic, at the core and not just on the lips, they will always be the party that plays catch-up.  And this Green voter will grow more and more irritated, and less and less willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

Comments

[Prof Goose]

So many things for me to comment on in this one (nice job). I will try to be brief, especially as I just blogged, well, I have been nastily ill for a couple of days.

The real contextual point you need to understand from a political science point of view is that third parties are invalids in our system...and they always will be. Third parties either absorb, or get absorbed by, the other two parties, because there's only one winner.

This first rule of a party system is Duverger's law (DL)...and it's a good explanation of why we have two "catch-all" "aggregated interest" parties in the US.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger's_law. It's like the only law we have in political science, so we're rather proud of it.

The way our system is set up (single member, first past the post plurality) is also why we have a party system that is not as "responsible" as it is in many countries.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-party_system#Arguments_for_and_against.

The solution as it exists around the world to this problem is a parliamentary or proportional representation system. Yes, it does a *much* better job of representing smaller non-majoritarian interests...and is also much more conducive to mult-party systems, but it also depends on the type of voting system itself...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voting_system

That's the basic reason for the two party system. However, I have been vertical for too long, and the nausea is back. Ergo, I will come back to complete this later.

[Rana]

Well, I'll wait until you're better for a full-on discussion, but I just wanted to note two thoughts before I forget them.

First, I question the "always" in your assertion about the invalidity of third parties. But I can see the general case you're making.

Second, a point I had in the back of my mind, but which I guess didn't come out, is that even if the no-third-parties hypothesis proves out, there's nothing that requires the two main parties to be Republicans and Democrats. If a viable alternative to the Democrats appears, it may well doom the Democratic Party itself to third party status. Yet the Democrats seem incapable of even considering the possibility -- yet one more aspect of the leadership's failure of imagination.

I hope you feel better soon!

[Chris Clarke]

You're right that the Dems need to choose for themselves their own desired core constituencies. I think a first step in doing so would be for the party to defiine its own core values and platform. Right now, the bulk of what passes for a Dem platform is either watered-down versions of ideas belatedly plagiarized from the Left (women's- and gay- and civil rights, support for unions, environmental protection, or the tattered "safety net" installed by Roosevelt in an attempt to deflate increasing union militancy) or from the Right in an attempt to "reach out to the middle" (Welfare "reform," et al.)

I wasn't a huge Dean fan, but one quality he possesses is the ability to articulate a Democrat platform that makes sense on its own without reference to the opposition's ideas.

The thing that disheartens me most about the Democrat response to their butt-whupping is the focus on electoral politics, the "see you in 2006" thing and the oft-expressed idea that we should all drop what we're doing to support the Ohio recount, as if squeezing Kerry into office through a hotly contested recount would improve a single thing in the long run. I support the recount, but I'm sure as hell not going to drop protecting the ESA and ANWR to do it.

The GOP won in part because they have mechanisms by which they have become a part of their constituents' daily lives, and the right that got them to the winner's side in 2004 doesn't delude itself that Presidential elections are the only way to get things done.

On the brighter side, there's a wonderful article in the latest High Country News in which Greg Hanscom details the results of last month's local elections across the West. Elevator version: tons of people in those Red states vote Blue - or even Green - on local and regional issues.

[Rana]

Hmm. I may have to track down a hard copy of that article, as I'm unwilling to subscribe to HCN, and they're now requiring it for readers. Or, hmm, maybe they're at bugmenot?

(My antipathy to HCN began when I was at an environmental history conference that gave some room to the magazine. Not only was the scheduled presentation by the editor full of outdated concepts and simplistic, a-historical maunderings about "mother nature" but the article he wrote about the conference was full of the same soppy stuff. It's a shame, because there is some interesting news content there, but it always manages to raise my hackles when I think about it, and so I'm keeping my money to my own little self.)

[Elayne Riggs]

I haven't been reading a lot of political blogs because I'm fairly burnt out. I don't think there's that much wrong with the Democratic party; I believe the Republicans took the general election because they cheated using no-paper-trail machines (owned by Bush backers) and massive voter intimidation. Kinda like what's happened in the Ukraine - the opposition candidate there didn't exactly lose, his supporters feel there's nothing ostensibly wrong with his party... there's not much you can do when the other side cheats.

[Rana]

Well, I don't have enough information to speculate one way or the other about vote fraud.

However, I will say that even if it were rampant, it doesn't negate the larger point -- I, and a lot of other people, are getting beyond fed up with Democratic dithering and wimpiness, at least at the national level (there are some feisty local and state folks still around). It's good to be having this conversation, but, really, it shouldn't take a presidential defeat to make people re-think their political strategy. They should be thinking about it every damn day -- that's what we're paying them for.

In other words, there may well have been fraud. But that's only an explanation, not an excuse. Bush shouldn't have been a viable candidate in the first place, but somehow his party was able to make it work. That we couldn't make it work with a better, more qualified candidate can't be laid entirely at the feet of voting fraud, and it shouldn't be. Otherwise, we end up with the same dynamic we saw after 2000, when all the talk was about how Nader "stole" the election, instead of how the Democrats could do better. They failed, and refused to admit it, choosing to blame a minor player instead of taking a good, hard look in the mirror. Are they going to do the same this time?

If so, they may just lose my vote. If Democrats can't get their shit together to win back the White House and Congress, or if they keep shoving my priorities to the back burner in the name of "collegiality" or "winning back the center", eventually I -- and other people like me -- are going to wonder how voting for a third party is going to be any different. At least then I'd know what I was voting for, and why.

[Harrison]

Great post. I so much want to have commented on it by now.

[Rana]

Chris -- you're right -- that is an interesting article. It jibes with my sense of how local/regional politics work in the West, and it's useful thinking about how those trends might play out, now that "blues" are beginning to re-think states' rights.

[Rana]

No worries, Harrison -- it's certainly not like the issues are going away! Comment when you've got the time.

[Kevin Walzer]

There was an interesting article in the Journal the other day by Howard Dean's campaign manager that said, of all things, that the Democrats could do worse than to follow Karl Rove's electoral strategy: target your base. Don't worry about the center, about the moderates; focus on your hard-core base, get them out to vote, and your chances will improve. He faulted the Democratic Leadership Council's shifting of the Democratic Party too far toward the center, and said the DLC has done nothing to enhance the party since Bill Clinton's election--its high-water mark of electoral success. Presumably he was calling for the party to shift leftward, to identify the things it is for rather than the things it is against (i.e., our candidate is Anyone But Bush). Certainly such a strategic shift would do more to accentuate the differences between the two parties. I found the article to be well-done and thought-provoking.

Here's a link: http://www.opinionjournal.com/editorial/feature.html?id=110005960

[butuki]

It's amazing reading all these comments; the whole system seems to be focused on jockeying for position and then keeping it that way, rather than getting down to business and ironing out all the real-world problems that need addressing. With the overly short 4-year system of necessity boiling the whole political process down to constant in-fighting, name-calling, and rhetorical speeches (I think if each president was given a longer period to stay in power people would, by realizing how long he would be at the helm, consider their votes a lot more seriously than they do now. At present there is always the excuse of "well, we'll just change him in four years if he doesn't work out") I don't see how anything is ever gotten done in the American government. Just the tendancy for all voters to talk about their system as made up of Democrats, Republicans, and "Third Parties" clearly paints just how bogged down in dogma the whole system is... it allows for no new ideas or changes in structure and constantly outdates itself further and further as more and more progress is made in the development of the society. In my view, the very setup of the present American government contributes to the lagging behind of progressive advancement. When a new structure of government so obviously needs to be considered, the process by which it presently works hinders any change. What does it say about the maturity of a people when their government can never grow with new ideas and alternative leaders? Why must it always be either Republican or Democrat? Haven't both parties been entrenched in their positions for so long that they no longer represent the ideas they originally came to power with? The government and the people need to re-define themselves, and that is not going get done by repeating the same old litany over and over again. there are others out there with ideas more pertinent to today's problems and climate (pun intended). Why not focus on them? Seriously give them a chance? There are too many serious issues to constantly be playing games with and getting disappointed by the two present political parties.

[LiL]

There are so many things I agree with here. Probably pretty much everything. Very good post. Wish I'd written it! And, like Harrison, I need to think about it a bit more before I can truly respond.

[Prof. Goose]

Well, let's try for comment #2. This may actually last a little bit longer than the first one. (yep, still engaged in battle with the flu...)

I think one of the problems we in the Democratic Party face is that, well, we were in control for so long, that a turn away from us is almost inevitable. The D Party held Congress for over 50 years with only a few blips. The Rs started breaking through in the presidency with Eisenhower, and have done very well since then nationally...a lot of that because of conservatives (35% or so of the electorate) realizing they should be Republicans, instead of the Democrats their families (esp. in the South) socialized them to be. This has also been occurring for liberals to the Ds, but they're only 20% or so of the electorate, therefore, the move is out of balance.

The US has been a consistently conservative country. The political culture is quite different from most other democracies, especially those in Europe. That difference has been attributed to many factors, rugged individualism, abundance of property, Protestantism, etc., etc. The Democrats were only able to win in this relatively conservative environment when parties crossed ideological barriers. They started losing after they starting achieving some of the great successes of the liberal movement in the 60s...and the country has been turning against them ever since, slowly, but surely.

Is my argument that the Ds have been TOO successful over time? Yes, they provided solutions to many of society's problems, leaving many (enough to change the outcome of elections) to say "now we can move on and worry about our pocketbook instead of social justice.

Are there inequities that remain to be solved? Yes, that's obvious...to us at least.

Are those inequities powerful and salient enough to bring people over to our side without a solid narrative and solid candidates? Nope, not at all. We have to persuade...and people only turn to government in times of crisis or real and salient equity concerns...

All right, that's enough for now. Good night all...back to bed for me.

[butuki]

But the question I really want to ask is, if there was a group or individual that tried seriously to overturn the present government and threaten the current system, would, according to the rhetoric of free government and speech, the current parties allow this to happen without political retribution? Is there any "third party" group that seriously threatens the present system safe from the kind of strong arm tactics that Bush and Ashcroft and Rumsfeld have used? Is the American government really free?

[Rana]

I'm going to focus most on butuki's comments, I think, because they are resonating most with other things I'm reading right now. And, to be honest, I'm not that interested in reforming the Democratic Party per se, although I believe that the lack of an effective counter to the Republican juggernaut has the potential to becoming a fatal flaw. _Someone_ has to put checks on them, and under the current system, the Democrats are best positioned to act as that check.

That said, the operant phrase is "under the current system." Much as I was discussing with Harrison in the post-Thanksgiving thread, the United States is facing, on multiple levels, increasing evidence that our current systems -- political, economic, environmental, cultural -- are no longer the best way of dealing with the complexities of the global community. So we are faced with a two-pronged problem: the need to alleviate suffering and prevent collapse in the short term, and a greater need to find a better way of doing things. Unfortunately, most of the energy I see out there is directed to the former, probably because reforming an existing system is often easier, and requires no new ways of thinking.

But, as I believe Einstein said, we can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking that created them. And so the larger project, of envisioning better and different ways of doing things, ways that will protect the disadvantaged and the weak from the strong and the privileged (human and non-human alike) and promote spiritual, cultural and environmental health, is desperately important.

Unfortunately, as yet, the movements toward such new thinking are sporadic, individualistic or limited to small, disparate groups, and inchoate. It's rather like watching an army of ants feeling their way across the forest floor -- and it is this, oddly, that gives me hope.

butuki, you wonder if it's possible for a new mass movement to prevail while the system favors the old approach, and while agents of that system are seizing powers that allow them to rigidly enforce their agendas. I think so, for the simple reason that, as anyone who has tried knows full well, it's virtually impossible to kill _all_ the ants. And, too, in times of repression, lack of an obvious organizational center -- at times a hindrance to collective action -- can be a highly important asset. Third parties in the formal sense may well be vulnerable, but it's harder to pin down and squash a movement of people with common goals and a common consciousness, but not yet possessing a conscious awareness of their collective power.

[Jimbo]

Great comments and a great post. To butuki's point, the Dems may indeed try to quash a third party movement on the left—I'm sure they'd probably succeed by virtue of their resources. But they'd succeed in quashing the movement only by making the third party irrelevant, that is, by moving left to shore up its base. That's what Dean almost accomplished until he was undone by the scream. Yet, in a sense, it was because we were all so frightened by Nader's effect in 2000 that the party's right wing was able to defeat Dean by virtue of ridiculing that scream. That is, the right wing knew that its base would largely follow on "Anyone But Bush" (ABB),so tacking right seemed more or less without consequence, that is, relatively risk-free. Had more of us been willing to say "no, I'm not going to vote for Kerry until he gives me something to vote for," instead of acceding to the logic (and rhetoric) of ABB, Kerry might have run a stronger campaign; or rather, since Kerry ran in the general election just as he had in the primaries, someone other than Kerry might have prevailed in the primaries to challenge Bush in a real way.

Hindsight thinking to be sure, but perhaps worth pondering.

jwb

[Rana]

What's particularly interesting about Dean and the whole "scream" phenomenon, is that Dean was not particularly liberal. All you have to do is look at someone like Kucinich to realize that. But he was indeed loud and passionate and had followers willing to go the distance for him -- so he got painted as a "lefty loony" and the Dems, rather than standing up for him, fled in fear that the right would be able to paint them as lefty loons too. So voters ended up with Kerry, the "electable" candidate, who was more to the left than Dean, albeit in a within-the-system way, and the Dems got slammed as both "too liberal" and as wishy-washy "flip-floppers." Stupid -- to provide the most simplistic judgement of this dynamic.

As I said, the problem is not left-wing values, but the weird fear of the Democratic leadership that the party might be -- horrors! -- associated with those values. My god, that is so, so whack.

[coturnix]

Great post! I agree completely. All those people who talk about branding are really completely misunderstanding the meaning of Lakoff's framing. There are two basic ideologies, each attractive to a distinct set of voters. Republicans are attractive to one set. Democrats are a hodge-podge, trying to appeal to both, thus seeming luke-warm to both. Nobody speaks to the other set. Democratic party should do it, and loudly and proudly. If not, another party, one with guts and clear convictions, will replace it over time. In the meantime we'll have to, somehow, stave off destruction of democracy by the current administration.

[cdiaz71]

This is a good post. You should consider posting it as a diary on dailykos.com.

[Rana]

That's flattering. :)

Since the comments here are at least as intelligent, though, and I don't think my own thinking would be as compelling viewed in isolation, I think I'll pass. (I also really, really dislike the commenting set-up there. Alas.)

But you're certainly welcome to post a trackback and direct people here.

Oh, and I should perhaps reiterate that, while I often find common cause with Democrats, I am not one myself, and have little interest in belonging to that party when alternatives exist.

I'm interested in the future of the Democrats as a tool to promoting my own agenda, but not in and of itself. If, say, the Green Party makes itself into a player on the national level as well as the local and state levels, I have no particular loyalties to the Democratic Party per se. Nor am I all that enthralled by the two-party system or the Electoral College. If we switched to a parliamentary system, or came up with something else more friendly to direct democracy, I wouldn't be too upset.

[Rana]

Okay, I know he's track-backed, but you really, really must read butuki's latest post.

And then go out and buy a used copy of that Cultural Creatives book. I want more people with whom to bounce ideas about/from it off of.

(Okay, that was phrased very awkwardly. I'm seeing all kinds of things pinging and sparking off each other between the book and the blogosphere, so I want more eyes than my own looking out for them and assessing the connections.)

[beth]

Rana, what an excellent post and what a great discussion. I'm burned out on political blogs and "let's reshape the Democratic party" thinking too. I don't think a third party is the answer, though - there is far too much money and power in the hands of the two major parties for them to allow another party to even come close. Living part time in Canada now, I am astounded by the difference it makes to have more than two viable choices, and how the strongest parties DO have to take into account the constituencies such as the Greens. But I think it's pie in the sky to speculate about changing systems or adding parties in the US anytime soon.

One other point - being a Vermonter, I'm not overwhelmed with Dean, although he was a good, middle-of-the-road governor. He has sounded better since the election, I think - he learned a lot. But Vermont politics are interesting, mainly I think because we really do have voters who are not particularly party-loyal and the state is small enough so that you actually get to know your representatives - and by that I mean you can meet them in person, and they come to your town and speak and answere questions from ordinary folks on a regular basis. This familiarity makes for much greater accountability on the part of the politicians, as well as making the electorate feel much more empowered. It's no accident that we elected Bernie Sanders, a former Socialist and until recently the only Independent in Congress -- and this "radical" is loved across party lines in Vermont, a state with plenty of both knee-jerk liberals and rural conservatives. That accountability (as well as the possibility of Bernie running against him) also had a big effect on Senator Jim Jeffords switching to the Democratic Party.

Part of the problem in the US is that it's just too damn big, and too easy for people to hide behind a TV commercial - or to be undone by a scream: the public never really gets to know them at all.

[Rana]

Yes -- and having a corporate media more interested in the bottom line than in providing a channel for the accurate transmission of information compounds the problem.

And, yes, I don't see the kind of political transformation I'm envisioning happening any time soon. As I've been saying, part of our approach needs to be thinking of ways to work within the (failing) system for the short term, while aggressively laying the groundwork for a better alternative in the long run.

[Rana]

And here's a more punitive and limited version of what butuki's envisioning. (I like butuki's version better, but my cranky side admits that Berube's has a certain cynical appeal.)

[butuki]

What Berube is proposing is exactly what I am talking about, But on an international scale, with chapters all around the world and working on all sorts of levels and fields. I'm thinking in terms of something like the alternative communal money system and health insurance system of that town in New Hampshire or Vermont (can't recall the name offhand) which proved wildly successful. Beth points out that the government right now is loaded with billions of dollars at their disposal, but I think it would be both impossible and destructive to try to take the American government on directly. That's why I propose a _parallel_ system, one that works within the present system. There are billions of us out here. That's a lot of clout. And no matter how fearsome American military might Bush can't attack _everyone_. A peaceful solution, passively wreaking change by sheer numbers, is what I propose. I believe it is the next step in the development of world society... the logical evolution of the social concepts that so radicalized the world during the 1920's to the 1960's.