Chicago ? The Democratic Party is growing more liberal for the first time in a generation.

It’s more antiwar than at any time since 1972. Support is growing for such traditionally liberal values as using the federal government to help the poor. And 40 percent of Democrats now call themselves liberal, the highest in more than three decades and twice the low-water mark recorded as the conservative Reagan revolution swept the country in the early 1980s.

While politicians such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama shun the liberal label, they’re rushing to court new power brokers who wear it proudly and constituencies that could barely win a nod from party leaders just a few years ago. For example, the top Democratic presidential candidates all planned to attend the YearlyKos convention of liberal bloggers in Chicago over the weekend and a Human Rights Campaign debate this week in Los Angeles on gay, lesbian and transgender issues.

They all skipped an annual gathering of the Democratic Leadership Council last month in Nashville, Tenn. The DLC is the centrist group that pushed for welfare overhaul and a pro-business agenda in the 1990s, helped launch Bill Clinton to the presidency and stood by centrist Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., when liberals attacked him for supporting the Iraq war and he effectively was drummed out of the party in a primary last year.

“There is greater liberalism today, both on economic issues and in opposition to the war,” said Robert Borosage, co-director of the Campaign for America’s Future, a liberal group that saw attendance at its June “Take Back America” meeting swell to several thousand from just a few dozen six years ago. “The conservative era is ending.”

The Democrats’ shift to the left carries some risk but probably much less than it would have in years past. That’s because independent voters – the ones who swing back and forth and thus decide elections – also have turned against the war and in favor of many more liberal approaches to government.

“There is greater support for the social safety net, more concern for inequality of income,” said Andy Kohut, the president of the nonpartisan Pew Research Center. “More people are falling into the liberal category based on their values.”