Carter's Primary Problem
Keene, David
David Keene Carter's Primary Problem Will he be the Dukakis of 1980? The year was 1970 and the cry was "law & order." Republican candidates from Mississippi to Illinois and from New York to...
...Secondly, the election of Republicans at these lower levels enlarges the pool of potential candidates for higher office...
...The Democrats also realized that inflation was the soft underbelly of the Republican tax offensive...
...His base is weak and his domestic policies could further disenchant Democratic liberals...
...in fact, he had angered many liberals who had supported his original election...
...For Carter, moreover, there is the danger of being trapped in the center-a lesson that Michael Dukakis learned too late last year in Massachusetts...
...Shortly after Carter had spoken to the delegates in a manner almost calculated to put them to sleep, Kennedy brought the crowd back to life...
...But as time goes on, a foreign policy designed primarily to bolster a president's popularity at home will wear thin...
...it was the Southern black vote that pulled him through, and on which he must rely in 1980, But a heavy black turnout could spell disaster for Carter within his own party if he is challenged by Edward Kennedy...
...As Carter has worked to reduce inflation, for example, he has been accused of ignoring the needs of the poor...
...Most people like to think that the party they consider their own stands for the kinds of things they want...
...They may be right, but they're playing a dangerous game...
...They won a dozen House seats, and picked up something like 300 state legislative seats, winning control of a dozen statehouses in the process...
...The problem for the Republicans then, and now, has been that most Americans are Democrats...
...They said it and the voters believed them...
...If a majority of Americans believe that taxes are too high, they are also likely to think that the people most capable of lowering them are people who are-like themselves-Democrats...
...since then presidents have been less able to count on the tacit support of their own party's activists...
...Still, few would deny that November 7, 1978, was an encouraging day for Republicans...
...For this reason alone, the Democratic Party can reap the benefits of popular feeling on almost any issue, if its leadership and candidates are flexible enough to line up behind the majority position...
...Republican candidates from Mississippi to Illinois and from New York to California were denouncing their Democratic opponents as "soft" on an issue of great concern to millions of Americans...
...Moreover, Kennedy's emotional appeal to his party's activist wing was underscored recently during the mid-term Democratic convention in Memphis...
...It will be remembered that in virtually sweeping the South two years ago, Carter, though himself a Southerner, only polled 45 percent of the white vote...
...Also in New Jersey, the young, fiscally conservative Senate candidate, Jeff Bell, won the Republican primary against an incumbent big-spender, only to be beaten in the general election by a liberal Democrat who was willing to ape the 1950s economic exhortations of Robert Taft...
...This latter development is extremely significant for two reasons...
...In fact, in the next two years, he might well end up fighting Edward Kennedy on domestic issues and the Moynihan/Jackson forces on defense and foreign policy...
...The fact is that Democratic Party liberals don't like Jimmy Carter and certainly don't trust him...
...The Roth-Kemp bill, the Laffer Curve, and Proposition 13 were the weapons of the Republican war machine...
...The seriousness of this threat, and the irony that a president may endanger his re-election by responding to the desires of the general electorate, lies in the fact that Democratic activists and primary voters tend to be much more liberal than other Democrats (just as Republican activists and primary voters tend to be far more conservative than other Republicans...
...Soon they were blunting the Republican offensive and fighting the GOP to a standstill...
...But while they could encounter serious opposition in 1980, none of them is stupid...
...They depicted virtually every Democrat running that year as a "radical liberal" who secretly cheered every time a mugger was liberated or a marijuana law broken...
...These state legislative victories could do much to revitalize a party that was on the ropes just four years ago...
...In 1968 Eugene McCarthy effectively challenged a sitting president...
...In the election just past, the issue was taxes, and again it looked as if the Republicans were riding a winner...
...In politics, two years can be a lifetime...
...Pre-election Gallup polls clearly showed that most AmeriDavid Keene is a political consultant...
...He addressed the issue of health care, but actually he was serving notice on the President and his friends that it is Edward Kennedy who is the real leader of the Democratic Party...
...That fear is easing now, and Republican National Committee Chairman Bill Brock believes that if the party maintains its momentum through 1980 it will be able to bargain for a fair break when redistricting begins...
...Unless they've already painted themselves into a corner in their home states, they will most likely adjust, as so many Democrats have done in the past...
...They seized a half dozen new governorships and made inroads in the Senate...
...But the center alone is not enough and he, like Dukakis, may find it difficult to pick up many friends on the right...
...In other states, too, Democratic quick-change artists effectively turned aside the Republican offensive on the tax issue...
...In any event, normalization of relations with China, SALT II, and the administration's lack of a serious policy toward Africa will make it extremely difficult for Carter to appeal to those on his right...
...Thus, we witnessed the astounding sight of representatives like Andy McGuire of New Jersey, a 100 percent ADA liberal, running for re-election as a fiscal conservative...
...Recent polls show Kennedy, among all Democrats, well ahead of Carter and especially strong among blacks...
...If this happens, Carter could find himself unemployed in 1980...
...They realized that they didn't have to let their Republican challengers shape the debate...
...Just ask Richard Nixon...
...Dukakis, a sitting governor, was beaten in the Democratic primary by Ed King, who went on to win the governorship in November...
...Republicans were shocked by the sight of Democratic liberals running around saying they were for less government, but they failed to understand that, as members of the majority party, Democrats could shift positions without losing a great deal of credibility...
...In pre-election polls, most people placed inflation above taxes as a source of major concern, and they believe that government spending and federal deficits are a major cause of inflation...
...cans thought Democrats, rather than Republicans, more capable of lowering taxes and trimming waste from government...
...If he continues to adapt to the demands of the general electorate and economic reality, he is likely to pursue policies that will further antagonize the activist left within his own party...
...Before he finished, everyone present knew that he had accomplished his purpose, and that if he wants it, the 1980 Democratic nomination is his...
...But Dukakis was not really a liberal Democratic governor...
...And while Dukakis alienated his liberal base, he failed to pick up support from the right...
...And as Democratic liberals grow ever more dissatisfied, they will begin looking for a candidate willing to challenge Carter in the early primaries...
...It cannot have escaped notice in the White House that the only thing Carter has done since becoming president that even temporarily reversed his decline in the polls took place at Camp David...
...First, with Democrats in control of almost every state legislature, Republican leaders have been living in fear of redistricting after the 1980 census...
...The American people might tolerate presidential media advisors like Gerald Rafshoon packaging substantially acceptable policies, but they won't abide policies that are solely designed to be package-able and saleable...
...Exploiting this skepticism, Democratic candidates successfully attacked Republicans for being insensitive to inflation...
...The importance of this cannot be overstated: The GOP has had real trouble finding attractive candidates in recent years...
...Few of them came out for higher taxes or big government, and most of them said that they too intended to cut taxes...
...Liberal senators like John Durkin of New Hampshire, John Culver of Iowa, and Frank Church of Idaho must be wondering whether it is their future he's referring to...
...But Jack Kemp and his fellow tax-cut advocates neglected this worry...
...They simply asserted that their tax-reduction plan would spur the economy (which it undoubtedly would) and bring in more tax dollars in the long run (which it might), and that consequently it would not prove inflationary...
...Then again he might not...
...Carter has certainly learned that an exciting foreign policy move can be used to divert attention from domestic failures, and that foreign policy is one area where a public-relations successes possible...
...The near un-seating of Gerald Ford by Ronald Reagan in 1976 further weakened the assumption that a president could not be challenged for renomination...
...Perhaps that explains why the CBS/New York Times survey taken immediately after Carter's China announcement found that, in spite of public support for normalization, more and more Americans are losing faith in Carter's ability to conduct foreign affairs...
...he was left with the center, and lost the re-nomination...
...But few people believed that we could continue spending at present levels, institute a massive tax cut, and still reduce inflation...
...If this occurs, he will have to look to the center, and even to the right, to make up his losses...
...With little American flags pinned on their lapels, they started talking about crime...
...Jimmy Carter, however, doesn't appear to have the same freedom of movement...
...That Republican Party fortunes may be on the upswing for 1980 is suggested by the post-election remarks of Senator William Proxmire...
...And for a time it looked as if the grand strategy might work...
...But the Democrats got smart...
...In light of the defeats of Democratic Senators Clark, Anderson, Haskell, and Hathaway, Proxmire warned his Democratic colleagues that their future could be bleak if they do not respond to the conservative wishes of the electorate...
...King ran as a conservative, and most accounts reported the battle as a liberal/conservative confrontation...
...Carter's people-or at least some of them-seem to believe that the conservative resurgence within their own party, and the attitu-dinal shifts among the public at large, militate against a challenge from the left...
...When the Middle East settlement appeared to be coming unglued, he grabbed the initiative again and announced a "normalization" of US, relations with mainland China...
...As a result, many liberals in Massachusetts sat out the primary or even voted for Dukakis' more conservative opponent...
...Jimmy Carter could face a similar problem in 1980...
...But once again the Democrats responded as only a majority party can...
Vol. 12 • February 1979 • No. 2
