Metaphors of Self
Weinblatt, Alan
Letter from a Whig Jean Westwood and the Mob (WASHINGTON )George McGovern's defeat on November 7th weakened the very foundations on which his party stands. The results cannot be viewed simply as a...
...Had the President personally been more popular and if he had really gone after Senate and House seats, the results might have proven even more disastrous for the Democrats...
...And the traditionalists - less wedded to principle than the desire to wield power - could go along with him because they see Kennedy as a man who can win in spite of his views on the issues...
...They would like to win, but some things are more important to them than winning...
...In addition, national and local Democratic candidates could almost always rely on the loyalty of the various ethnic blocs that dominate many crucial states...
...This is precisely why many "traditional" Democrats are fighting so desperately to take the party back from the radical fringe that seized it in Miami...
...Should this happen and should Kennedy emerge as a defender of the discredited welfarism that sunk McGovern, the President will have successfully removed a major roadblock in the way of building a "new American (and, incidentally, perhaps Republican) Majority...
...If there is a strategy directed against Kennedy, then, it might make sense for the Republicans to force him to stand up in the Senate as a defender of the Great Society welfare programs that have led to so much dissatisfaction within our society...
...For forty years the Democratic leadership has been able to count on the South, the poor, and the laboring man...
...They know that if they don't, things could get much worse...
...Edward Kennedy, of course, is such a man...
...Whether Richard Nixon's strategists and managers could have done it alone ing willingness to abandon partisan allegiances of long standing...
...As it is, they must live with the knowledge that Democrats willing to cross over at the national level today might well elect Republicans at other levels tomorrow...
...But he might be able to win in spite of himself if he can cloud his positions on the issues and ride on the family name...
...If they can succeed Kennedy and his party will both be in serious trouble...
...The party then is in a real box...
...Many of them won only because they vociferously disavowed McGovern and his policies - and others made it because of a low turnout which - this time - favored Democrats...
...For the President appears to want to force the issue...
...The erosion began in the early sixties and reached a high point four years ago when millions of normally Democratic voters deserted their party to vote for a third party candidate more to their liking - or for a man who had for a decade been viewed by most of them as representative of everything wrong with the Republican party...
...He has managed during the course of the last several years to stake out for himself a position far to the left of a majority of his colleagues in the Senate and his supporters in his party...
...The Republicans and his enemies within the Democratic party, on the other hand, can be expected to try to pin him to his positions - to point out publicly that he and McGovern represent the same wing of the party...
...Analyst Kevin Phillips, for example, began writing and talking about an "emerging Republican majority" and White House political advisors began trying to figure out how to appeal to dissident Democrats in the South and elsewhere...
...The irony is that they appear to be right about Kennedy...
...He and his people are already talking about a "new American Majority" and seem intent upon consolidating political gains made on November 7th both by putting together programs specifically designed to appeal to this majority and by reducing or eliminating "bloated government bureaucracy...
...Indeed, on many issues he can be found somewhere to the left even of George McGovern...
...But they can't anymore...
...The results cannot be viewed simply as a personal defeat for him, but must be seen instead as a popular repudiation of the new Democratic party and the philosophy behind it...
...They may be willing to accept cosmetic changes like the replacement of an identified radical such as Jean Westwood at the chairman's level, but they are not about to abandon control of the party they fought for and won between 1968 and 1972...
...And they aren't about to sell out their principles either, for they are - as has already been noted - true believers...
...They will compromise only to the extent that they might fall in behind someone who agrees with them, but gets along with the Richard J. Daley's of the world...
...They control the national committee and the machinery in many states...
...Thus, the signs were there in 1968 and at least a few people read them correctly...
...But the traditionalists won't be able to take it back because the McGovernites aren't about to give it to them and they hold most, if not all, the cards...
...publican) Majority...
...Mc-Governism has apparently been repudiated, but McGovern's people are in control of the party...
...The fact that traditional Democrats were able to hold on at the state and local level can't even have eased the pain for the true believers...
Vol. 6 • January 1973 • No. 4
