2016 Postmortem
In reply to the discussion: Are you old enough to remember real Dem's? [View all]Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)That was the party that got through the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, and the Fair Housing Act, if you want to focus on race-related issues.
Then, on other issues, there was the nuclear test ban treaty, Medicare, and federal aid to education.
Those are from the Kennedy-Johnson era. The time covered by the OP also includes the New Deal and I won't even bother trying to list all the progressive accomplishments of FDR. His weakest area was certainly race, because he largely didn't try to take on the Southern Democrats who were segregationists, but he did establish the Fair Employment Practice Committee to cover federal employment. Then came Truman, also a Democrat, who desegregated the armed forces.
The 1990s certainly saw economic gains. Still, if you want to assess overall progressivism, you'll have to take the bitter with the sweet. That Democratic President put his pen to welfare "reform", NAFTA, DOMA, and GrammLeachBliley.