Politics, U.S.A.-1964

...He could also continue the politics of temporizing, moving before the immediate pressures, etc...

...The second question is therefore crucial...

...and then they sold the ideology back to the Establishment for use as a ration...

...There would be two crucial questions, here: First, what pressures can be mobilized among urban ghetto Negro youth that would be seen by most Northern whites as legitimate, even if militant, and would energize white allies rather than stimulating rightwing organization as the recent riots have done...

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...And this means that we must address the question of what liberals and insurgents should be doing now to try to bring about movement toward the Great Society...

...2. Insofar as they are terrified, these people might well be willing to follow the principled right-wingers...

...The Establishment sold an anti-government ideology to the little businessmen in such a way as to protect the Eastern businessmen's private government from interference by Washington...

...On the other hand, a "centrist" policy of no forward movement, no action to anger the Establishment or anyone else, nor even to reconstruct the Establishment with labor and the Big Six Negro organizations more fully accepted in it—such a policy would leave American society still "on the threshold," and at least a third of our people still frustrated and terrified...

...Or on personal and organizational lines, e.g., between Humphrey and Robert Kennedy...

...Concerning the first question: there is unfortunate evidence from the President's career in Texas (see Ronnie Dugger in a recent issue of The Progressive) that he might try first to coopt, then to control, finally to castrate the liberals and insurgents...

...3. So long as the money and legitimacy of the Establishment is denied these people, however, they probably can do no better than getting a third of the Presidential vote—and outside the South, so few Congressional seats that they can carry no real power in the Federal government...

...In short, would the emergence of a dangerous rightwing Republican party paralyze liberals and insurgents, or is there some way for them to continue pushing or pulling the President as they have in effect done, through their mere existence and former suspicion of him, since the assassination...

...But now both sides in this arrangement are moving in their own separate directions: the Establishment is increasingly unable to pay even lip service to this rhetoric because it is so closely tied to the government, while the little businessmen have been oversold on the anti-government ideology and are taking it so seriously that most of the Establishment has gotten frightened and wants to switch over to the Democrats, in order to manage Washington in another fashion...

...if sizable disarmament took place, the country would discover we were not naked to attack...

...4. If Point 3 is correct, a crucial question is whether they get Establishment support...

...The other major lever is an expansion and deepening of the politics of "creative disorder" in the streets...

...in the Democratic Party...

...In the past, the party could be described as a continuously renewed deal between little business and Eastern Established big business...

...but most of them are terrified by the transition...

...Or would it be hopeless...

...In any case democracies do not survive as democracies by "trusting" Presidents...

...8. If this is correct, we can look toward a peculiar period in which effec...

...In this case, the Republican party will break up for good, and Goldwater will be unable to win more than a third of the votes...

...the pressures of racial conflict, the un easy detente, the talk about Triple Revolutions...

...Or some other, presently unexpected lines...

...5. One possible interpretation of recent events is that the Republican Establishment had already (beginning with the bipartisan tradition, continuing with Kennedy's "coalition" Cabinet, and being fulfilled in Johnson's appeal to their more folksy elements and their budget-balancing ideology) mentally migrated to the Democrats and were therefore emotionally and otherwise unable to resist the Goldwater takeover of the Republican party...

...In case of a racial explosion or a major international disaster, he might even win...

...If he wanted to...

...If jobs were provided, street violence in the cities would drop, fears of Negro competition for scarce jobs would diminish, etc...

...Finally, what if some major earthquake results in Goldwater's winning...

...6. If the interpretation set forth in Point 5 is incorrect, one can hardly explain the Easterners' fiasco except in terms of utter irresponsibility: they may just have been too unsure of themselves and their goals to have mobilized an effective "modern Republican" campaign...

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...What kinds of pressures would be available if Johnson wins with 60% or 65% of the vote and carries 50 more Democrates into the House and 4 more into the Senate...

...This requires local coalitions of labor, civil rights, "senior citizens," peace, and unemployed groups and organizations, with help from a similar national coalition and a program built around the large-scale reconversion of military effort into ending poverty...

...But there is reason from experience for liberals and insurgents to "trust" him to do so...

...What kind of pressures would be available if Johnson wins only 537 or so, and has about the same Congress as he does now, While Goldwater establishes effective control of the Republican Party via alliances between a good part of the Republican Establishment and the "frustrated" vote...

...These people are frustrated, fed-up, and fearful—in part—of the new society into which we are moving, but much more so of the fact that we are moving but have not yet arrived: the fact that we stand on the threshold of major changes, need to make them, but have not yet done so...

...Perhaps there would be a major increase in right-wing strength by 1968...

...9. If the 1964 election ratifies the condition postulated in Points 5 and 6 —that is, the emergence of a fairly cohesive but permanently small rightwing Republican party and of a "bipartisan" Democratic party with a probable permanent majority—then almost everything might depend on the President...

...In that case, one can imagine widespread on-the-streets harassment of liberals (as in California, with night telephone calls and bomb threats, or in Mississippi, with night-riders, or in New York City with long-term white school boycotts...

...They may try to break out of it, but will be fearful of doing so, as long as one-third of the country remains organized behind right-wingers in the revamped Republican party...

...But most of them could probably live in such a world once they got into it...

...In short, a crucial issue is whether the Republican party is or is not breaking up, for good...

...He would have a huge majority in Congress, because of the defeat of Eastern Republicans running on a Goldwater ticket—a majority huge enough to expel some of the furthest right-wing Southern "Democrats" from the Democratic caucuses, pass a great deal of New Frontier legislation, move quickly toward full employment, reasonably painless racial integration powerfully enforced, major steps in arms reduction and detente, etc...

...In short, my estimate is that much of the Establishment has become nationally more "responsible" than ever before and is acting irresponsible only vis-a-vis the Republican party...

...he may see the higher way of pleasing every group is not to throw each a bone out of the present pot but to transform the pot by building the Great Society...

...If this interpretation is correct, one could expect large parts of the Republican Establishment to support Goldwater regardless of his program, etc...

...B) Is there any way of pushing toward "The Great Society" regardless of the President, or of continuing to push him toward it regardless of what he is "at heart...

...It is the strain of moving they can hardly stand...

...Certainly this latter seems to describe Eisenhower...

...They might like to keep the Negroes, the Russians, the poor "in their place...

...tive American politics takes place with...

...Secondly, can poor and un employed whites organize nonviolent street action similar to that of the Negroes—or will they find organization impossible in the absence both of any 'middle-class poor" analogous to the middle-class Negroes, and of vigorous support from the labor movement...

...The little businessmen bought the anti-government ideology in order to make sense and indignation, instead of despair, out of their own helplessness in the complexity of mid-century metropolitan society...

...It should be noted that insurgent groups — the Negroes, the peace movement, possibly the unemployed—may well be uncomcomfortable with a "bipartisanized" Democratic party...

...He may be different as President...

...Their terror might be mobilized behind a homegrown American equivalent of fascism: that is, a repression of the Negroes, a holy Cold War against Communism and perhaps a hot war against China and Cuba, sopping up unemployment with arms-race spending, etc...

...Would there be time between November and January to plan for resistance to a major turn toward the right...

...The most important possible pressure, certainly if there is a big Democratic victory and probably in either case, would be vigorous concerted action in the Democratic primaries of 1966 and 1968 to defeat "moderate," conservative, or machine Democrats and to nominate instead principled and able liberals, militant Negroes, peace candidates who can pull part of the old Republican vote, etc., for the House and Senate...

...Concretely this means whether Goldwater can hold the Republican Establishment inside the party...

...If that happens, Goldwater might get far more than one-third of the votes...

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...30-60% of Northern Republicans for Goldwater...

...they might like not to have racial integration, disarmament, leisure and education for the working class and income for the unemployed...

...alization and self-justification of the Establishment's insistence on private government...

...maybe 60% of Southern whites for him...

...A hard core of these people may be principled as well as emotional right-wingers, who will loathe the new society even after it has arrived...

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...But note the choice between forward movement and centrism will probably depend chiefly on the President, and this raises two questions: (A) Is he serious about moving into "The Great Society," or is this part of the rhetoric necessary to include liberals who are suspicious of his past, and fear he is still at heart the Senate Leader who wants to coopt everyone, please left and right and center, and move nowhere...

...In the long run (and probably even in the fairly short run) a policy of major forward movement would probably end the "on the threshold" frustration that produces such widespread support for right-wing ideology...

...if integration moved ahead quickly, suburbanites would soon learn that property values did not drop...

...and the way in which he forced Humphrey to be chief hatchetman of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party at the National Convention, in order to prevent a Southern walkout while neutralizing the liberals, suggests a pattern for the future...

...Thus the newly right-wing Republican Party would evaporate, and the Democratic Party would probably split up...

...7. My own estimate is that the Republican Party is splitting...

...Perhaps between those who would want to stabilize the situation at full employment and moderate deterrence versus those who want total disarmament and income-without-jobs...

...We will return to the kind of "outside" powerinthe-streets power—they might have...