Yet it is safe to say that Reich’s recipe would not have produced the required results this time around. To understand why Biden has fallen short of expectations and rhetoric, we need to know what made LBJ and the liberal legislative achievements of 1965-67 possible. They came in the wake of LBJ’s landslide victory. LBJ pummeled the Republican Barry Goldwater, winning 61% of the popular vote and 486 electoral votes. Outside the South, where Goldwater was admired for his opposition to federal civil rights legislation, the GOP nominee carried almost no congressional districts. This was the most definitive endorsement of a Democratic candidate since the height of FDR’s power in 1936.

Even more importantly as an explanation of the legislative achievements to follow, LBJ had coattails. By expanding their control of the Senate by two, 68-32, and gaining 37 seats in the House to command a 295-140 majority, LBJ’s Democrats were in their best position in a generation to break the stranglehold of the bipartisan Conservative coalition in Congress, which in the House controlled at least 100 Southern Democratic votes and over 100 Midwestern and Western GOP votes. The newly elected LBJ Democrats came from outside the South and supported liberal legislation.