Between Exaltation & Despair
Connolly, William & Kaufman, Arnold S.
This issue of DISSENT has been made up before the two major political conventions; hence it is impossible to discuss here the candidates and programs, whom to vote for, if anyone, etc. Our...
...But there is a tendency on the part of the press, a wider public, and radicals themselves greatly to overestimate the efficacy of militant, nonviolent methods—an overestimation that is quite understandable given prevailing criteria of what is newsworthy...
...Millions of Americans those "doubters and cussers" who would "rather were infected with this self-defeating pessimism...
...It seems to us undeniable that radical liberals have called the shots more accurately than anyone else since the fight against the Vietnam War began in the spring of 1965...
...only co-optation and ideological soften-to an unwillingness by some radicals to use ing awaited those who would try...
...The more unconventional forms of political action have been legitimized by apparent success in a way that gives them a future potential they lacked before...
...Thus the New York Times columnist Max Frankel, who attended the Illinois Republican and Democratic state conventions and heard Daley, Dirksen, and other party hacks, suddenly realized that no one indulged in the usual anti-Communism or called for new military crusades...
...And so, COMMENTS AND OPINIONS while Kennedy and McCarthy enthusiasts hacked each other to pieces, Humphrey moved into a commanding lead in his quest for delegates...
...Walter Reuther's challenge to George Meany is reverberating through the entire trade union movement...
...At the same time those of us not deluded by press reports will perceive that the future potency of unconventional tactics depends heavily upon our ability to employ them intelligently, and in combination with more conventional forms of political action...
...Remember...
...but by the same token many will stick because the taste of partial victory, the access to centers of party power, has provided reinforcement for those whose earlier despair was rooted in a lack of political experience...
...But the fact that events are conjoined does not guarantee that there is a casual connection...
...they debate "black power" and the "guaranteed annual income...
...a precarious standoff between two kinds of men of violence: those who threaten unbridled use of illegal violence, and those who threaten unbridled use of official violence...
...The more militant segments of the antiwar movement first exposed its faulty logic, but, following classic form, electoral effort has deepened the impact of those criticisms on the general population...
...Expectations are enlarged...
...Many signs point to the emergence of such a coalition, the group that Michael Harrington has called "the first party...
...However hypocritical they may be, they unwittingly help set into motion the dialectic by which problems and possibilities, formerly submerged, are seen by a wider public which then transforms them into political demands...
...Millions of AmerA year ago the New Left convened its New icans moved back into the political arena...
...surgency may yet be squandered...
...Increasing numbers of younger faculty ally themselves with sensiblestudent insurgency...
...While ble and unbeatable was discounted...
...There may be substantial fall-out...
...Regardless of the outcome in August or in November, opportunities remain to exploit our real achievements and to build a new coalition...
...Unions in colleges and public schools are challenging the AAUP and NEA...
...For the legitimacy of such tactics depends on the existence of a widespread belief, not always justified, that they yield significant political gains...
...The judicious use of unconventional tactics can drive wedges into established structures...
...In the interim, Herbert Marcuse charted throughout the country decided that the only the course for the New Politicians: authentic contest that remained was between McCarthy militants must remain aloof and "negative..., and Kennedy...
...Within academic communities the same fissures are opening...
...Suddenly the "new politics" is reflected "with " the established parties...
...The moderate middle cowers—but grows...
...An illustration' will help fix this point...
...PERHAPS the most hopeful accomplishment of the Left in the last three and a half years is the shift it has forced in the rhetoric of political discourse, a shift in the nature of the ideals and programs under active discussion...
...Consequently, while strategic options expand on the Left, the prevailing exaggerations threaten to frustrate efforts to consolidate what has been achieved...
...An established power that and give their life to the Great Refusal...
...We must support the long-range efforts to build new constituencies among the blacks, the poor, the unorganized, the students, and many others...
...In this issue we present a comment by two writers who have been active in the McCarthy campaign...
...Paradoxically, The Johnson Administration, it was said, could this is partly due to the exaggerated optimism not be dislodged by conventional political that followed Johnson's withdrawal, and partly means...
...The new rhetoric thereby moves the policy focus of discussion and political conflict to the Left...
...A New Party leverage already achieved...
...The new rhetoric is used by Nixon and Humphrey...
...Public employees' unions are growing rapidly and helping to politicize a previously untapped force of change...
...These are among the symptoms of a general reconstitution of American liberalism as a more radical force in American politics...
...Roy Wilkins's days seem numbered as the insurgency within the NAACP grows...
...Our main purpose here is to try to knife through the prevailing mood of anger and gloom...
...they espouse "reconciliation" and "disarmament...
...electoral politics was irrelevant to the overbe renominated, and that they should ignore riding issue of Vietnam...
...Political candidates speak of expanding "participation...
...Intelligence in political life depends at least COMMENTS AND OPINIONS in part on one's ability to detach himself from the hurly-burly of activity—to ask whether anticipations square with events...
...For our achievements to date are substantial and, more important, even the symbolic gains were totally unexpected by those who now write them off...
...With the exception of Happily, events shattered these somber cerZolton Ferency, the state chairman of Michi-tainties...
...The bitterness of the primary fights left the opposition unnecessarily divided...
...These achievements have also helped to vindicate nonviolent forms of direct action...
...If these newly politicized radicals do not lose nerve, they can have much to say about the future of the Democratic party—and more important, American political life—regardless of the November outcome...
...A A YEAR AGO John Bailey wrote to all county dismal premise: the Johnson Administration chairmen in the Democratic party inform-could not be dislodged from its dominant posiing them that President Johnson was going to tion...
...The new coalition from among the poor, militant blacks, Hispanos, American Indians, liberal intellectuals, young radicals, radicalized businessmen and professional people, artists and writers, militant—often newly organized—trade unionists, disaffected veterans, and even retired bankers and generals, provide a solid social base for a new program of radical liberalism— if we don't lose our political nerve in a fit of despair over the possible or likely candidacies of Humphrey and Nixon...
...And many antiwar minated in the primary victories achieved by liberals in the party gloomily but "realistically" McCarthy and Kennedy reinvigorated the esadjusted to the inevitability of Johnson's re-tablished political processes...
...nomination...
...More important, the ideology of the cold war is dying...
...Our next issue (NovemberDecember) will appear before the election and, in addition to a report by Bernard Rosenberg on the Democratic convention and campaign, there will be a number of brief articles from our editors and contribu tors expressing various opinions as to the course of political events and what response to take...
...The direction of the War has been reversed...
...the liberals adjusted to "necessity" and the New Thousands of office-holders' tenacious will to Leftists defied it, they converged upon the same remain in power could be ignored...
...hence it is impossible to discuss here the candidates and programs, whom to vote for, if anyone, etc...
...The implications of this shift are systematically underrated by many radicals who understand well the function of rhetoric as a tool to delude the masses, but who fail to appreciate its role in generating new aspirations and new pressures for change...
...Promises are made and not kept, and a new militancy emerges to press for implementation of the unkept promises...
...They champ at the bit...
...Every major candidate now feels obliged to speak of de-escalation and negotiations...
...only months before had been viewed impenetraThus an unlikely coalition emerged...
...For, from the moment McCarthy entered the race, everything depended on cooperation between his forces and those that eventually rallied around Kennedy...
...But they also face the danger of calamitous reversals if they lose nerve...
...Now, faced with the prospect of a NixonHumphrey race, New Leftists and liberal "realists" are again converging upon their dismal premise...
...And if, unfortunately, these opportunities will not be available to us in the Presidential race, they will surely and significantly be available in many Congressional contests...
...An incipient coalition on the Left begins to recognize its common objectives...
...be heard than helpful...
...It must be said that Kennedy himself never participated in the reckless expansion of personal attacks...
...CONSIDER our accomplishments against the background of the pessimism that went before...
...During this same period all one had to do was urinate on the steps of the Pentagon to gain front-page coy COMMENTS AND OPINIONS erage in the New York Times...
...and these initial gains can be converted by conventional political action into more substantial accomplishments...
...Politics Convention in Chicago and refused to The potentialities generated by this new inadjust to the "realities" of electoral politics...
...But we must also relentlessly employ our new leverage within the Democratic party, especially at local and state levels, to solidify what we have gained...
...There is no reason for the leaders of the new coalition to cheer...
...was needed to provide a base for the New When Johnson withdrew, jubilant insurgents Politics...
...Accomplishment or bitter disappointment and disorder must follow...
...The young Senator's terrible assassination destroyed all such calculations...
...they are even concerned about "alienation" amongst the poor and the young, the unemployed, and the routinized employees...
...Johnson withdrew...
...The ADA first split, then rallied behind the McCarthy candidacy, while ardent Johnson-Humphrey spokesmen such as John Roche and Leon Keyserling lost their influence within liberal circles...
...In any event, it was not to be...
...There is in this society, as in the world, a balance of terror...
...In any event, myths acquire reality...
...Our ability to create a stable social order based on justice depends on making the most of the opportunities inherent in the present situation and on the skill with which radical liberals practice a politics of radical pressure...
...It is just this response we seek to counter...
...no real change has occurred in the distribution of wealth, the nature of American foreign policy, the ghettos, the arms race, the organization of work life, the quality of our penal institutions, the basic direction of the welfare state, and so on...
...For, in our view, this mood threatens to suffocate the movement so spectacularly started last fall...
...The forces of the liberal Left have a rich opportunity to capitalize on their achievements, to translate symbolic victories into future gains...
...Our only reasonable prospect for electoral success depended on joining their separate political strengths when the time was ripe...
...If we build the new coalition well, national offices and policies will yield sooner or later...
...disagreeing amongst themselves only when to use the carrot (concessions to the former) and when to use the stick (acquiescence in the latter...
...It is only to be expected that millions who remained ignorant of the, imagination and intelligence that went into the Colorado success tend to attribute it, and many local victories like it, to the flamboyant tactics they have constantly heard about...
...And Humphrey, who said in April, 1966, "I want to be tolerant, but I can't see the difference between containment in Europe and Asia," now proclaims new priorities in American policy...
...Three and a half years of relentless, but undramatic effort led to the frustration of Humphrey's search for delegates in Colorado...
...Between the first and the second utterance little has changed — except the country's political climate...
...Humphrey was nothing, Wallace loyal to those who, without hope, have given of no consequence...
...There is every reason for them to be pessimistic about the prospects for their new insurgency...
...they discuss both short-range campaign issues and the long-range problems of the democratic Left in America beyond the party conventions and the election...
...the waning of the cold war demands, he says, "a shift from policies of confrontation and containment to policies of reconciliation and peaceful engagement...
...The sequence of successes that started gan's Democratic party, key party officials pub-with the "Dump Johnson" movement and cullicly went along with Bailey...
...Peace negotiations began...
...Even if Humphrey gains the nomination, established leaders of the Democratic party face severe challenge from millions of insurgents politically activated by the candidacies of McCarthy and Kennedy...
...This issue of DISSENT has been made up before the two major political conventions...
...Realists" and New Leftists will together complain that the successes we have catalogued are fragile, the promise of a new coalition overdrawn...
...And, as an outgrowth of the political challenge mounted on behalf of insurgent candidacies, the Coalition for an Open Convention was formed...
...A mix of political education, electoral activity, and nonviolent direct action went forward without much attention from the press...
...One wonders whether the only sustaining thread in the political thought of some militants is a certain mindlessness about tactics...
...And meanwhile we can hedge those who have power by means of a system of political constraints that they can ignore only at peril to their own political ambitions and to the stability of the nation...
Vol. 15 • September 1968 • No. 5
