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lyndon johnson
Remembering Bill Moyers, Who Always Strived to Make the Future Work
In the wake of today’s grim Supreme Court decision imperiling American citizenship for millions, he exemplified what a citizen could and should be.
Jun 27, 2025
A point of personal privilege, as they say: I want to take a minute to mark the death and life of Bill Moyers, first because he was a friend and an integral if quiet part of the climate fight, but also because I think—more than almost anyone else—he puts our strange moment in stark relief. In the wake of today’s grim Supreme Court decision imperiling American citizenship for millions, he exemplified what a citizen could and should be.
I knew who Bill Moyers was, of course, my whole conscious life. He’d been an omnipresent figure in the 1960s, coming to D.C. as a key aide to Vice President Lyndon Johnson only to quickly peel off to help found the Peace Corps. When LBJ wound up in the Oval Office, Moyers became one of his core advisors, helping shape the Great Society programs, before he finally broke with his mentor over Vietnam. Then he remade himself into the most important television journalist of his time, with a devoted following at CBS and then PBS.
But he really emerged into my thinking in the early 1990s when I was writing a book called The Age of Missing Information, which was an effort to understand how the mediated lives we were living shaped our minds and world. It was something between an experiment and performance art: I found the largest cable system in the world (a hundred channels in Fairfax,Virginia) and taped everything that came across them for for 24 hours—that meant I had 2,400 hours of tv, which I spent a year watching. A miserable year—there was so little sustenance. Except for Mister Rogers, and for Bill Moyers (who were not unalike, come to think of it). He interviewed a poet, and it was thoughtful and real and human, an oasis in that desert. No wonder he was beloved; no one save perhaps Edward R/ Murrow ever used the impoverished medium that is television with as much grace and skill. (Thirty Emmys, by the way.)
Bill Moyers was the preeminent interviewer of his time because he was so good at listening—that’s what effective interviewing really is. And listening is the thing most out of fashion in the people who rule over us now.
And then, a few years later, still in my 30s, through a series of coincidences, I got to work with him much much more closely; he’d asked me to join the board of the Schumann Foundation, the philanthropy that he ran for many years even as he continued his documentary career. Schumann was an unusual operation—the two brothers (heirs to the IBM fortune) who’d founded it were on the board too, and they were as generous as it was possible to be. When Bill decided an idea was worth, say, $200,000, they would invariably propose $400,000 instead. And so a great deal of important media and progressive work for several decades was funded essentially through his good graces.
I left the board, in fact, to avoid a conflict of interest because they wanted to make the grant that would help found 350.org; without it the first global grassroots climate campaign would not have gotten off the ground. And when the time came to start Third Act, the Schumann Foundation, then in the final throes of “spending down” their assets, made a small but key grant to give us the chance to explore the idea. I was a volunteer in these organizations, but not everyone can be a volunteer; Moyers understood that, and helped make sure that we, and others, had the wherewithal to pay decent wages to people doing hard and important work. He was instinctively generous.
But that’s not what sticks in my mind right now. It’s his other qualities: a deep empathy, a deep curiosity, and a deep commitment to reality as the basis for understanding the world. Those are not to be taken for granted—he’d grown up in the segregated south, for instance. But he cultivated them his whole life, till they were his nature. And they are, I think, the exact and polar opposite of our current political dispensation—the people defunding Black colleges and renaming naval vessels to make sure they don’t honor diversity, the people shutting down satellite feeds so we can’t see the Arctic melting, the people fixated on rounding up the poorest and most vulnerable among us.
Bill Moyers was the preeminent interviewer of his time because he was so good at listening—that’s what effective interviewing really is. And listening is the thing most out of fashion in the people who rule over us now. President Donald Trump, above all, just talks and talks and talks some more, in CAPITAL letters.
Moyers, by contrast, was not just an architect of, but also the exemplar of, the postwar liberal order in America, one of the best reflections of its virtues (and doubts). He represents a literacy now passing, an unpretentious sophistication that marked America at its intellectual best. I know, from many conversations in recent years, just how saddened and alarmed he was by the turn our world has taken, but I also know that he was constantly thinking of ways to make the future work. Which is, after all, our job.
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Why Isn't the Harris-Trump Election Like the 1964 Johnson Landslide Over Goldwater?
The transformation of the Democratic Party from a working class party to one of prosperous elites can’t be ignored or wished away. It is one reason why this election is so close and why an extremist may capture the electoral college. But it doesn't have to be this way.
Oct 31, 2024
In 1964, Senator Barry Goldwater, the Republican from Arizona, captured his party's presidential nomination and unabashedly conducted an extremist, right-wing campaign. He opposed civil rights legislation and New Deal social welfare programs. He implied a willingness to use nuclear weapons, saying he would give U.S. field commanders and the NATO Supreme Commander the freedom to launch them without presidential approval.
As Goldwater famously said in his acceptance speech at the Republican convention, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
The Johnson campaign exploited Goldwater’s extremism with what may be the most effective and chilling TV ad of all time.
If you watch the famous campaign ad, you’ll see a very young girl standing in a field, pulling petals off a daisy while counting them out one by one. Then, we hear the voice of a military commander (with a strong southern accent) doing a similar countdown that ends in a nuclear explosion which takes over the screen. The ad finishes with a voice-over, Lyndon Johnson offering a few pious words about love and peace. Johnson is never seen. Goldwater is never mentioned.
Lyndon Johnson crushed Goldwater 61.1 percent to 38.5, winning 486 electoral votes to 52.
This year’s election also features a self-declared extremist. Yet today, the presidential race is a toss-up. Trump’s extremism promotes lies about immigrants eating pets and the poisoning of our blood. Trump calls Democrats the enemy within and he praises those who stormed the capital on January 6th. And in total violation of the history of American electioneering, he continues to argue that the 2020 election was stolen from him. A vast majority of Republicans agree with him. Goldwater and his party of 1964 look like centrists in comparison.
Given Trump’s blatant extremism, how can the election be so close? Why isn’t Harris 20 points ahead? What is so different between now and 1964?
Hillary Clinton, in 2016, provided an explanation, shared by many, that about half of all Trump voters are bigots:
You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. (Laughter/applause) Right? (Laughter/applause) They're racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic – you name it.
Voters are willing to elect Trump, the ultra-extremist, because he voices their fears about the rise of women, people of color, and the LGBTQ+ communities. More than anything, they and Trump want to make America white again!
If that theory is correct, we’d expect white working-class voters to be very illiberal on those issues and to have become even more so over the last several decades. We tested that theory in my book, Wall Street’s War on Workers, tracking 23 divisive social issues questions found in long-term voter surveys. It turns out that in 13 of the questions, the responses shifted in a more liberal direction over the years, and none of the 23 became more illiberal. Here are two stunning examples:
“Should gay or lesbian couples be legally permitted to adopt children?”
Said Yes in 2000: 38.2%
Said Yes in 2020: 76.0%
“Should legal status be granted to all illegal immigrants who have held jobs and paid taxes for at least 3 years and have not been convicted of any felony crimes?”
Said Yes in 2010: 32.1%
Said Yes in 2020: 61.8%
If the deplorable argument is wanting, as our research suggests, what is a better explanation for the enormous support Trump is receiving?
A disclaimer is in order. It’s impossible to address all the factors in one short article. But this question shouldn’t be ignored, so here goes.
Let’s start with trust in government. In 1964, an amazing 77 percent of Americans agreed that “they trust the government to do what is right just about always/most of the time.” In 2024 it was 22 percent.
That means the incumbent President in 1964, Lyndon Johnson, was viewed as the leader of a government that protected it’s people. Kamala Harris, as the current incumbent Vice-President, is mostly viewed as a leader of a government that is not protecting the average person. Harris is perceived as part of the establishment, the elites who have benefited during the years of runaway inequality, while Trump is perceived as its wrecking ball.
But that displeasure with government today suggests another set of explanations, including the collapse of unionization and the rise of job insecurity facing working people over the past four decades. More than 29 percent of the total U.S. workforce were union members in 1964. Add in their families and at last half of all Americans had close union connections. Today, 94 percent of all private sector workers are not in unions.
As a result, nearly all workers have had little or no protection against the mass layoffs that have regularly afflicted the country since the 1970s, even when the economy is prospering. During the Johnson years, the union ecosystem was so dense that Democratic politicians had no choice but to appeal to the interests of working people. They had to be the party of workers whether they liked it or not.
But starting with Bill Clinton, unions became small enough to ignore. Appealing to and appeasing Wall Street and corporate interests became central to the Democratic Party’s path to power. They wrongly believed that workers had no place else to turn.
And white workers, in particular, fled the Democrats. The research for my book strongly suggests that the main culprit was mass layoffs and the failure of the Democrats to address them.
Take Mingo County, West Virginia, with a population 25,000. It had 3,300 coal mining jobs in 1996. In that year Bill Clinton received 69.7 percent of the vote. By 2020, Mingo County had lost 3,000 of those coal mining jobs, and Joe Biden received only 13.9 percent.
Is this cherry-picking one country to make a point? No. For Wall Street’s War on Workers, we tested all the counties in the Blue Wall states of Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.
Our findings showed that as the county mass layoff rate went up, the Democratic vote declined. In short, the Democrats are being blamed for failing to protect working-class people from the destruction of their jobs. While working people may not know all the details about stock buybacks and leveraged buyouts, they know that Wall Street has been walking all over them and the Democrats have done little to stop them.
In discussing with my colleagues why this election is so different than 1964, one noted that the problem may be that Harris didn’t have enough time to mount a full campaign. But another jumped in and said, maybe she had too much time. Say what?
“She’s a corporate Democrat,” my colleague responded, meaning that the more Harris campaigns the more she sends that corporate-friendly signal to working-class voters. When they say she isn’t specific enough about her plans, they’re also saying she isn’t speaking directly enough to them about their issues.
The transformation of the Democratic Party from the party of the working class to the party of prosperous elites can’t be ignored or wished away. It is one reason why this election is so close and why an extremist may capture the electoral college. If Trump wins, he will surely wield his axe against government, and that is certain to negatively impact the most vulnerable among us.
It doesn’t have to be this way. My research and that of the Center for Working Class Politics show that a strong progressive populist message is very attractive to working people, especially in the Blue Wall states. It’s a damn shame that so many Democratic politicians can’t see the writing on the wall.Keep ReadingShow Less
Thank You, President Biden. Now Do the Right Thing.
Don't let history fool you. Trump can be destroyed, but only if those in a position of power show the courage that's needed. It’s now up to Biden's inner circle and the leaders of the Democratic Party to make the correct decision.
Jun 30, 2024
By showing his age and fragility in the debate, President Joe Biden did us all a big favor. There now is a possibility, still slight but higher than before, that he will bow out of the race and not run again.
On November 20, 2023, I wrote a column—titled "Who Has the Courage to Tell Joe Biden Not to Run?"—that asked Biden to drop out. I took heat for that, even from my friends and colleagues. I heard all kinds of arguments, ranging from “He’s a great president and deserves another term,” to “It’s too late to do anything about it.” I was also accused of being a defeatist and some said that my attitude would weaken Biden and help Trump win.
After Biden gave his energetic State of the Union address, the finger wagging accelerated: “See, Biden clearly has the wherewithal to crush Trump,” friends said. I was not convinced. But, after Biden’s Thursday night debate performance, a lot more people became unconvinced. He looked old and spoke even older, that was undeniable.
It’s now up to Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party. Do they have the guts to tell Biden not to run? Do any of the younger presidential hopefuls have the nerve to speak out? Does Biden have the guts to withdraw?
It is past time to listen to what the Democratic rank and file have been saying all along. They want someone younger to do combat with Trump. While I’m usually a poll skeptic, Biden’s approval numbers are pathetic. The president stood at just 37 percent as of June 24, and that number hardly budged even after the surprisingly strong SOTU address. That polling weakness, I believe, reflects less on the president’s job performance than on how he looks and acts on the job.
Unfortunately, the primaries have been completed and no significant Democrat has showed the nerve to oppose him. That leaves it up to Biden to decide, and in the aftermath of the debate debacle, he and his team say they’re running harder than ever... right over the cliff!
But that could change if his poll numbers further deteriorate and if enough Democratic leaders feel they might lose as well in the fall if Biden heads the ticket.
Misreading History
Pundits have encouraged the Democrat’s cowardice by claiming that defeat always follows when a sitting president is challenged by one of his own party. The poster child for this story is 1968, when Democratic Senator Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota took on President Lyndon Johnson in the primaries. McCarthy’s strength led Johnson to withdraw, and for party regulars to engineer the nomination of Vice President Hubert Humphrey. This ended with the victory of Richard Nixon in the general election.
That’s not the way I see it. I challenge all comers to a historical duel about 1968 politics. I think that election was entirely winnable by Humphrey had he taken a mild anti-Vietnam War position a bit sooner during his fall campaign.
That pivotal year is worth reviewing. In 1968, there were 536,000 U.S. troops in Vietnam killing and being killed in large numbers. The Tet Offensive showed the American public that the Johnson administration had been lying when describing our success conducting the war. It was clear that America was not winning. McCarthy challenged the sitting president with a strong anti-war message, appealing to the support of young people in the growing anti-war movement. (About one million men were drafted into the armed forces from 1965 to 1968.) Thousands flocked to his campaign, going door-to-door in New Hampshire where McCarthy gained 42 percent of the Democratic primary vote. The next primary was to take place in Wisconsin and following his New Hampshire scare Johnson knew he was sure to lose. On March 30, LBJ dropped out of the race, and on April 2 McCarthy won Wisconsin by 57 to 35 percent.
With Johnson out, Humphrey became the Democratic Party establishment candidate, but then Robert Kennedy jumped in, making it a three-man race. On April 4, Dr. Martin King Jr. was assassinated in Memphis and riots broke out in 100 cities across the country, leading to 43 deaths and the mobilization of National Guard units and the military occupation of several U.S. cities. Disruption and chaos had the upper hand, and by the time of the California primary, on June 4, it was clear that Kennedy, would defeat McCarthy and become the leader of the anti-war Democrats. Sadly, he was assassinated that night in Los Angeles, greatly weakening the anti-war electoral efforts.
The August 26-29 Democratic convention, held in Chicago, turned into a riot, a police riot, as the Chicago police—under the control of Mayor Richard Daley—viciously attacked the generally peaceful anti-war demonstrators. Anti-war convention delegates, and even CBS’s Dan Rather, were beaten as Daley turned his political machine into a ramrod for the Humphrey campaign. The carnage was broadcast live on TV.
After Kennedy’s murder it was a forgone conclusion that Humphrey would become the Democratic nominee. But the key political event at the tumultuous convention turned out to be the vote on a rather mild peace plank for the Democratic Party platform, something that the Kennedy and McCarthy delegates hoped to salvage for their efforts. But LBJ, pulling the strings, refused to compromise and the plank was narrowly defeated.
I try to avoid the prediction game, but I am willing to go out on a limb on this one: If Biden stays in, we get Trump. If a younger Democrat becomes the nominee, Trump will get crushed.
That fall, Vice President Humphrey ran against the former Vice President Nixon, who based his campaign on law and order, scaring the newly concocted “Silent Majority,” and criticizing the riots and anti-war demonstrations that were ripping through the country. Nixon also claimed to have a plan to end the war in Vietnam that he would reveal at his inauguration, which turned out to be an appealing lie. Humphrey, an organization man nearly to the end, stayed loyal to the unpopular LBJ positions and fell behind by 44 to 27 percent in a September 27 Gallop poll.
On September 30, 1968, Humphrey finally broke ranks with LBJ in a nationwide speech. He announced that he would put an end to the bombing in Vietnam and would call for a ceasefire. This brought McCarthy and many of his supporters, as well as Kennedy supporters, into the Humphrey campaign, quickly narrowing the gap. But with only a month to go Humphrey didn’t quite get there: Nixon won 43.4 percent to Humphrey’s 42.7 percent, with segregationist George Wallace netting 15.5 percent.
I believe any objective analyst would conclude that had Democrats supported the peace plank at the convention or had Humphrey offered his peace plan sooner, he would have won. So please don’t use 1968 to tell us that if Biden withdraws, the Democrats are sure to lose, (which is what Kaitlin Collins said on CNN the night after the debate.)
I try to avoid the prediction game, but I am willing to go out on a limb on this one: If Biden stays in, we get Trump. If a younger Democrat becomes the nominee, Trump will get crushed.
It’s now up to Biden and the leaders of the Democratic Party. Do they have the guts to tell Biden not to run? Do any of the younger presidential hopefuls have the nerve to speak out? Does Biden have the guts to withdraw?
President Biden, we thank you for your service. Now give us the chance to thank you again for protecting democracy by stepping aside.
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