As the party of inclusion and opportunity, the postwar Democratic Party embraced an ethos of universalism. In a study of American party ideology, political scientist John Gerring describes Democrats’ consistent post-1952 message as emerging out of the “intertwined concepts of consensus, tolerance, compromise, pragmatism, and mutual understanding”—a “Universalist weltanschauung, in which all peoples, all faiths, and all lifestyles were embraced (at least in principle).”91 Democrats focused less on structural economic issues (like the conflict between labor and management) and more on the
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