Ruy Teixeira and John Judis are kind of (literally) whitewashing the history of the New Deal. They totally ignore the sausage making that went into the enduring legislation from that period and the dirty compromises necessary to get Southern segregationist Democrats to pass them.

What happened to the Democratic Party is that after the Second World War it began to take equality before the law for ALL people as a serious concept and a certain portion of the American people have never accepted or forgiven them for that.