The reversal by the mid-1970s of the public ethos that supported the agenda of the Liberal Democratic Coalition had many causes. For every change, there are winners and losers. In the heyday of rising affluence, few perceived themselves as losers, even as various oppressed and disadvantaged groups began gaining larger shares of the country's resources and product. But by the seventies, competition for jobs as well as for domestic and international market shares became intense. In the job market, Baby Boomers, women, and minorities began competing with white males for prime positions in the professions, in business management, and in the shrinking sector of high-wage manufacturing. Meanwhile, international competition from the revived and fast-growing industrial centers of Europe and Asia cut into the viability of core domestic industries, leading to massive layoffs of once-prospering wage earners. At the same time, the American economy became more heavily dependent on imported oil than at any time in its history. The oil crisis of 1973, followed by another in 1979, signified for many a return to an economy of scarcity, a mindset seemingly confirmed by the decade's “stagflation,” which featured double-digit inflation and more than 8-percent unemployment. A zero-sum mentality cultivated a retrogressive political environment. All this occurred as the radical nature of the revolutionary changes in American life began to dismay the still traditionalist core of the American polity.

Many of the liberal achievements had begun to agitate sectors of American voters that either had previously shown little concern with the changes or had become sensitized to how the changes had cost them.