CAN MCGOVERN WIN?
Howe, Irving
Insofar as anyone can, I'll try to answer this question. But first, some analytical remarks about the McGovern movement and the social context in which it arises. For whatever happens in...
...They concerned the sheer material survival of the working class and unemployed...
...Even if George Meany were screaming his heart out for McGovern, labor would still be sharply divided in regard to the election...
...people are trying to use the democratic process...
...It is a weakness that need not be fatal at this stage of development, for new movements tend first to flourish among persons who enjoy the possibilities of relative leisure and who are inclined toward generalized ideas...
...Neglected groups, not always discernible through the lens of a simple class analysis, come to a new consciousness...
...A desire for change—orderly but fairly deep—may indeed sweep the country...
...III LET'S TURN to the relations, such as they are, between the union leaders and the new political movement...
...McGovern himself seems, on televiCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS 558 sion, a man of some reflectiveness, decency, and ease...
...But they are real...
...The demands of the first stage of the welCOMMENTS AND OPINIONS fare state were urgent, elementary, glaring...
...If some of them can't yet put their needs into the precise formulas of an issue, they can cry out their sense of a trouble...
...To label the views expressed by McGovern as "isolationist" seems to me inaccurate and malicious...
...This means that the labor movement is split three ways, with strong minorities pledged to both Nixon and McGovern, and the remainder either sitting it out with Meany or undecided...
...Tax reform can be a potent weapon in the movement toward a society COMMENTS AND OPINIONS which, though not socialist, approaches an egalitarian model far more closely than does American society today...
...But if the McGovern movement fails to gain strong support among the American workers and the lower-middle class, then not only will it not be able to win the election, it will not "deserve" to...
...These range from militant women to homosexuals to smaller ethnic groups, like the Chicanos...
...What Meany says isn't necessarily what 15 million workers will do en masse...
...Recent primaries showed that McGovern could get a fair proportion of the blue-collar vote even without official union endorsements...
...Conciliation is essential.* * Alexander Barkin, head of COPE, is quoted in the New York Post, July 12, 1972, as sayingto an old-line Democratic politician: "You socalled responsible leaders of this party seem tothink the kids and the kooks and the Bella Abzugs can win you some elections...
...They have to...
...There remains a central weakness, however, in this new movement: its lack of strong plebeian support and participation...
...it employs a populist rhetoric...
...it supports the Vietnam war...
...Where the New Left was able to mobilize thousands for demonstrations in Chicago, it was reduced in Miami to a feeble little band parking for a while in the lobby of McGovern's hotel...
...People discover new needs, new problems, new goals...
...But first, some analytical remarks about the McGovern movement and the social context in which it arises...
...I offer the following reasons, some obvious and other speculative: • These union people, who have plenty of political experience, seem honestly to feel that McGovern's political stress is too "far-out," that it will not gain in the election the kind of support it could gain in the primaries, and that disaster will follow...
...What is involved is the far more important fact that no movement for truly democratic and deep-going social change can thrive, can claim political and social authenticity, unless it finds massive support among the people in whose behalf it proposes to act...
...THERE ARE, of course, difficulties...
...But the older groups—the labor people, the traditional liberals—also reveal a good measure of insensitivity and indifference to the authentic yearnings of the newer constituencies...
...No one has a monopoly on parochialism...
...WHAT IS the general content of the demands raised during the second stage of the welfare state...
...It sought to provide rudimentary kinds of protection (social security, unemployment insurance, etc...
...q Postscript August 20, 1972 THE TWO WEEKS between the writing of the above comments and my reading of the proofs have not been a happy time for the McGovern movement...
...some of the new reformers are a little too blithe in their readiness to minimize the immediate consequences for American workers of a sharp reduction in war-producing industry...
...If nothing else, the mere upsurge and coherence of these energies ought to be regarded, after some years of demoralization, as a victory for the idea of democracy...
...some Democratic politicians have indicated, not so subtly, an intention to sit out the campaign...
...Let us remember that the use of the populist label to describe the McGovern movement is imprecise...
...Much will depend on McGovern's ability to project both proposed social change and personal reassurance...
...The groups and movements thrown up during the second stage of the welfare state—groups and movements that have even more difficulty in cohering their ranks and sharpening their ideas than did those of 40 years ago—sometimes tend to look down their noses at the plebeian character of the first stage of the welfare state...
...Some of these issues, like pollution, may be overstated or exploited in behalf of apocalyptic visions...
...Right now, in mid-August, the outlook is rather bleak...
...Once formulated, these demands then required a major social crisis, the Great Depression, to give them an immediate political charge...
...But there is the distinct possibility that the usual elements of prediction no longer hold...
...previously mute needs have been articulated...
...Some of this feeling seems to me understandable, and a bit of it warranted...
...There are also genuine divergences of interest...
...That will be the test...
...These difficulties have to do with economic interest, social status, political power: they came through vividly enough at the Democratic convention...
...Well, he was wrong and the labor criticism on this point is valid...
...Other such issues—notably proposals for tax reform— constitute a first, hesitant step toward extending and redefining the limits of the welfare state...
...But the demands of the second stage of the welfare state must necessarily be less precise—at least during initial efforts to formulate them...
...it is energized by a strong revulsion against the Vietnam war and the whole tradition of military interventionism...
...I, for one, find the idea of electing delegates by quotas disturbing, even while liking the immediate consequence—the appearance of large numbers of black and women delegates...
...But it would make things too easy simply to suppose that the differences between, say, the Meany people and the McGovern people are no more than differences of "style...
...No one asks George Meany to announce that George McGovern is his favorite PhD...
...Something, a little bit, will depend in 1972 on the kind of people who read these notes...
...Some of them I don't like, just as some of the people to whom I refer don't like my ideological dis position...
...As for foreign policy, even these differences can be exaggerated—as they clearly are by the Lovestone and ex-radical ideologists who see enemies only on the Left...
...If nothing else, the theory of historical stasis, that we are in a dead end of stagnation brought about by industrial affluence, has been shown to be utterly false—false in both its conservative and "radical" (Marcuse) versions...
...A bad mistake...
...That there will be aspects of the McGovern campaign and movement we will not like, I take for granted...
...It has shown that housewives and graduate students can be as sharp in ward organization as cigar-smoking politicians...
...Such illusions are as intellectually sterile as the Meany–Lovestone hard line on Vietnam and military support for reactionary regimes in the name of anti-Communism...
...To have alienated the Daley machine will not help, no matter what pretense of friendship is announced...
...McGovernism is thus far a movement of academics, professionals, young people, and the like who employ a populist rhetoric...
...And let's try to be as objective as we can in order to ask ourselves, why do the top leaders of the AFL–CIO dislike McGovern as much as they do...
...And anyone who doubts whether "it matters" is invited to cast a long hard look at the Supreme Court— a Court likely to be with us for years to come...
...Socioeconomic clashes still occur within the framework of a capitalist economy but they help to transform and modulate that economy...
...he has admitted that he did so for "political" reasons—South Dakota is not exactly strong in unionism and he felt obliged to heed the pressures of his constituency...
...The McGovern movement looks forward to relaxations in world tension, it denies the rightness of the Vietnam war, and it proposes an American foreign policy strongly disinclined toward military interventionism...
...As the 1968 election showed, COPE, the political arm of the unions, is remarkably efficient in getting out the blue-collar vote at elections (though not primaries...
...If you engage in a successful struggle, you will have a "vested interest...
...There is life, there is vitality, there is eagerness, there is a desire to right wrongs...
...Others are expected to...
...But when these clashes are enacted politically and positions of power are defended and challenged, passions mount...
...This new movement has shown itself remarkably efficient at political maneuvering, often beating the old-timers at their own game...
...Nevertheless, the differences as to foreign policy between the AFL–CIO people and the McGovern people are real, and they are not going to be washed away...
...But there is a campaign ahead, with many possibilities of surprise and reversal...
...They are devoted volunteers...
...I want to suggest that we are entering a similar development right now...
...Mike Harrington suggests the interesting possibility that just as the 1928 campaign of Al Smith helped bring to political awareness new elements of the urban population and thereby prepared the way for the Roosevelt victory in 1932, so the McGovern campaign could do the same thing for previously dormant or inarticulate segments of the population...
...the real question is whether a foreign policy much more hesitant about military interventionism than were Kennedy and Johnson is now appropriate...
...some of the new reformers fail to grasp with any real sympathy the feelings of white workers who are afraid they will be squeezed out of their jobs...
...All such calculations, familiar to the point of cliche, could still work out, and that of course is what the Republican strategists expect...
...No serious person in American politics is really isolationist...
...Political clashes still occur within the American center, but they help move the center in one or another direction—this time, it would seem, to the Left...
...indeed, it could make all the difference...
...Out of such "confirmations" disaster must follow...
...There are people within, or in the service of, the unions who constantly talk about some unified creature entitled "labor...
...They were, as it turned out, right...
...The bulk of McGovern's domestic program ought surely to be attractive to unionists and workers...
...Otherwise, one may foresee the following scenario in1973: Someone comes up to Barkin and says, "Hey, Alex, how come you have no nose...
...On the other hand, if Meany and his friends decide to sit this one out, there will still be a substantial minority of unions—the UAW, the government employees led by Jerry Wurf, probably a number of others—coming to McGovern's help...
...But there's an opposite error, and for the McGovern strategists a dangerous one...
...The Meany–Lovestone position advances a traditional cold-war kind of anti-Communism...
...An ideological campaign would be a disaster, but so would a campaign that failed to consider in depth the major issues...
...To be sure, there is a segment of the peace movement, no doubt reflected among some McGovern supporters, that in its justifiable revulsion against the Vietnam war tends to make simplistic proposals for withdrawing American power from, say, the Middle East...
...We're not...
...It therefore makes no sense anymore to speak of "labor's response" to the election, as the Meany spokesmen continue to do...
...But if passions are essential to the cause of radical change in America, they can also be terribly destructive...
...If we assume that the usual elements of prediction employed in analyzing previous elections also hold for this one, McGovern obviously has little chance...
...That's a clumsy mouthful of language, but perhaps it's also suggestive...
...The whole point of the McGovern campaign, indeed the only point, is that it come out with a forthright stand for significant social reform...
...Some trade unionists believe, unfortunately, that it is to their interest to sustain a high level of war production...
...They learn, from the experience of earlier struggles, how to exert pressure, and it would be both politically foolish and humanly insensitive to dismiss them...
...they reflect a bewildering but vital interweaving of group interests, new constituencies...
...Even if, as seems improbable, the complete McGovern proposal for cutting war expenditures were enacted, this country would still have the capability of blowing up the earth several times over...
...Labor, they warn us, will do this or not do that...
...554 II WE ARE EXPERIENCING what I propose to call the second stage of the welfare state in America...
...Roughly the following: • The American "underclass," barely noticed during the first stage, begins to rumble with discontent and demands that its needs be considered as well as those of the organized workers in the unions...
...I. W. Abel may feel discomfited by the PhD's swarming around the McGovern camp...
...Anything else is elitism...
...But is it politically serious to allow such responses to become central...
...The struggle for black articulation, with all the historical torment that it carries, can range from "black nationalism" to the quite impressive participation by large numbers of well-organized blacks in the Democratic party...
...Some of the blacks, a growing number of them, are workers, and certain of their socioeconomic needs are taken care of by the unions—but obviously, not all...
...and there has been the damaging Eagleton incident, which speaks well neither for McGovem's staff work nor the "human sense" of his advisers...
...it could gradually cement an alliance with the trade unions, still an indispensible force for majoritarian social change...
...Insofar as anyone can, I'll try to answer this question...
...How else can it be in politics...
...against the worst effects of crisis and depression in capitalist society...
...But here, one feels, is a genuine upsurge of popular and democratic sentiment, a genuine possibility for the kinds of change the country needs...
...But if anything in American politics is worth a try, now, in 1972, this is it...
...Well, we'regoing to let them try to do it for you this year...
...So, tension is bound to follow and some of the conflicts at the Democratic convention were signs of that tension...
...But since when, in American politics, do serious people apply down-the-line ideological tests to everyone in or near a political movement...
...But some things are clear: a host, sometimes a chaos, of new desires, yearnings, and demands have recently been thrust upon the American scene...
...Anyone who checks out the AFL– CIO publications over the last few years will find a strong emphasis on tax reform and income redistribution—which, if not precisely COMMENTS AND OPINIONS the same as that of McGovern, is surely close enough to warrant cooperation...
...Now the pinch is on the other foot...
...The first stage of the welfare state—enacted during the 1930s though prepared for during the previous 25 years—had relatively precise ends...
...would be reduced to "a second-rank power" or our military resources dangerously depleted...
...But before that, let me try to place the McGovern phenomenon in a social context...
...Can anyone suppose, however, that it is this vote, or a few others like it, which really fires the hostilities of the Meany leadership...
...Thousands upon thousands of young people, the very ones who ought to be the allies of the unions, will be embittered, feeling it was Meany's "sabotage" that helped defeat their candidate...
...there are now several labor responses...
...For whatever happens in November, it seems clear that a new political force is arising in the United States...
...Insofar as they do, the result is political self-destructiveness and moral snobbism...
...There is a difference...
...There is a touch of righteousness and snobbism among certain New Politics people...
...These range from radical schemes for income redistribution to proposals for legalizing marijuana...
...Much about the behavior of these people at the Democratic convention was impressive: their persistence, their seriousness during the platform debate, the participation of large numbers of women and blacks...
...The odds, no doubt, are still against McGovern...
...McGovern voted at one point for "right to work" laws, which labor had sharply opposed...
...Which is not to deny that people on both sides may behave foolishly...
...it is politically self-defeating simply to brush such people aside...
...Some of the social ideas distinctive to the second stage of the welfare state are still in the discussion phase: ideas having to do with democratic control of corporations and a more humane organization of work...
...But in a little while, we may expect, they will also become issues for public debate and political struggle...
...George Meany has taken the "no support" position one feared he might...
...Some of McGovern's votes in Congress conflicted with the positions of the AFL–CIO, though it can't be doubted that in the main he had a good liberal record (86 percent on the ADA scorecard...
...For what is involved here is not merely expediency, not merely the fact that the McGovern movement needs blue-collar votes to win the election...
...It has enormous possibilities and, for that very reason, faces enormous pitfalls...
...Underclass" may here be a sociological euphemism for the blacks...
...AndBarkin replies cheerfully, "Yeah, but I've spited my face...
...Nothing whatever is wrong with that...
...Whole new constituencies have been mobilized...
...Put in such general terms, the conflict between groups that ought ideally to be partners, and the all-but-complete breakdown of the liberal-labor-ethnic coalition that won the first victories of the New Deal period, can be discussed with some objectivity...
...The Jewish vote may no longer prove as overwhelmingly Democratic as it has in the past...
...Precisely because it is a popular manifestation that has stirred the imagination of many COMMENTS AND OPINIONS people, the McGovern movement contains within it many shadings of opinion...
...Haven't other politicians with whom the AFL– CIO is friendly also on occasion diverged in their voting from its preferences...
...This new movement, centered for the time about Senator McGovern but certainly not putting all its hopes on his immediate campaign, could make the Democratic party into a vital force once again—or it could founder on the rocks of righteous sectarianism (in Frank Mankiewicz's wisecrack about the inner politics of the Democratic reformers, "every little meaning has a movement of its own...
...Some trade unionists—e.g., those in the building trades—feel they have a stake in maintaining a tight labor market that keeps the number of black entrants to a minimum...
...Later in this article, I will go into detail on the vexing problem of the relations between the McGovern movement and the trade unions...
...That is to dismiss the leaders of the AFL—CIO as soured old men who don't represent the ranks and to whom no one listens...
...Intelligent spokesmen for labor opinion, such as Gus Tyler of the ILGWU, have been saying for some years now that income redistribution is a key matter—how can they not respond posi tively to McGovern's program...
...Populism in America, whatever else it may have been, was a deeply plebeian mass movement...
...If, then, the trade union leaders sit on their hands, or sulk, or confine themselves to congressional campaigns, they may hasten a selffulfilling prophecy—they may contribute to a McGovern defeat and then shake their heads wisely, claiming they told us all along...
...Barkin and his friends may—we hope they will —change their minds when they cool off...
...There is a strong ideological clash between the views put forward on world politics by Meany and his foreign policy adviser, Jay Lovestone, and the views put forward by the McGovern movement...
...The country may be ready for the kinds of changes I have called the second stage of the welfare state...
...Ideology sometimes comes as a protective smokescreen before the advance of program...
...The beneficiaries of the first stage of the welfare state have an interest—call it a "vested interest," if you wish—in preserving and extending their gains...
...But these are matters to be worked and, if need be, fought out in political practice —provided, that is, one agrees that we have here a vital, significant new force that speaks for democratic social change...
...Surely, if McGovern is to have any chance at all, this crucial vote in the industrial states must be won...
...It could win the allegiance of masses of black voters, and not merely some black celebrities...
...u SO WE COME to the question with which we began: Can McGovern win...
...yet that hardly explains the acrimony and intensity of feeling...
...It helped strengthen the socioeconomic position of certain less-favored segments of the society, especially the workers...
...it does not oppose the present course of steadily mounting war expenditures...
...For one thing, that Mc 556 Govern is fallible, likes to win elections, isn't a saint, and can admit mistakes...
...ARE THESE DIFFERENCES INSURMOUNTABLE...
...This does not mean everything that happened in Miami was happily democratic...
...And no doubt, there are people near the McGovern campaign who have illusions as to the reformability of Communist societies...
...George Meany may find it hard to think of Shirley McLaine as a political partner...
...But let us also remember that they have shown they aren't mere "playboys" or dilettantes...
...Some of the party professionals may decide that regaining control of a shattered party in 1973 is more to their interest than pushing McGovern into the White House...
...Most of the building trade unions and the Teamsters' Union are going to support Nixon: which comes to about 25 percent of the strength of organized unionism...
...For what seems to be involved is not merely disagreement but a strong dislike...
...Whether, or how, it will reach a satisfactory fulfillment can't be said...
...and it finds —thus far—its main centers of support among the educated classes, the academics, the professionals, the young...
...Insofar as this supposition is put forward in good faith, one can agree or disagree with it...
...The demands acted upon during the Roosevelt administration had been developed over decades, mostly by the labor, socialist, and liberal movements...
...The official AFL–CIO position— truculent, without much effort at public explanation—will do labor no good regardless of who wins the election...
...A little honesty is called for...
...The real campaign is not yet underway, as this is written, but one hopes that the McGovern people will be more thorough than in the past about presenting serious and thought-out positions on the major issues...
...The fate of the McGovern movement will be decided by its ability—one hopes, by its success—in stirring underprivileged blacks, unionized workers of all colors, persons of various ethnic backgrounds who live modestly, sometimes even on the edge of poverty...
...The welfare state shows itself to be essentially a realm of conflict—thus far contained within certain limits but, through the persistence and new definitions of these conflicts, also capable of extending its boundaries...
...From several accounts one gathers that the union leaders have strong emotional reactions against the kinds of people active in the McGovern campaign...
...At best, the release of troubles leads to the formulation of issues...
...But what follows...
...Are we to believe that George Meany is prepared to accept the reelection of Nixon simply because McGovern didn't vote "right" on one or another issue...
...In 1968 the supporters of Humphrey told those of us who had favored Eugene McCarthy that reluctance to vote for Humphrey (no one had to love him) would help elect Nixon...
...Much will depend on McGovern's skill at the tremendously hard and delicate task of enlisting traditional constituencies from the New Deal and post-New Deal coalition while continuing to elicit the new and youthful energies he has tapped...
...I think not, at least in principle...
...Even those who don't like the McGovern phenomenon ought July 30, 1972 to see this...
...Those of us who kept insisting during the 1960s that the way to social change was through plunging into politics, rather than by indulging in corrupt fantasies of "revolutionary" violence, should feel highly gratified...
...Even if the McGovern ticket goes down to defeat, it may play a valuable role in preparing for a later victory by a new coalition of the liberal-left...
...the only question is whether the trade unions will have the sense to recognize that, from their own point of view, the strategy they now seem to be initiating—though one hopes it's only postconvention gripe—is precisely the one they argued against so passionately four years ago...
...Nevertheless, from the point of view of the democratic Left as it has been expressed in these pages over the years, the recent events leading to McGovern's nomination give cause for hope...
...McGovern has already strengthened his programmatic commitment to Europe and Israel, and as far as the latter is concerned, we may look forward to steady pressure on him so that not the slightest tincture of ambiguity on his part (or malice on anyone else's) remains possible...
...Surely, no serious person can believe the nonsense Hubert Humphrey spread in California that, if McGovern were elected, the U.S...
...One good sign is that a number of large and by-no-means-leftist unions—both the electrical workers' unions, the ILGWU, and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers—have endorsed McGovern...
...Given some of the people the union leaders have found it possible to cooperate with, they might learn to get along with the many serious and idealistic recruits to the McGovern campaign...
...Though themselves hardly monks living by ascetic prescripts, the union leaders take a plebeian "class" view of the young, professional, academic sorts of people who have done such a remarkable organizational job for McGovern...
...And it has shown that volunteers, amateurs, newcomers can do hard and sustained political work...
...New or newly perceived issues common to the whole society, though often pressing most heavily on the poor, come to the forefront of attention...
...THIS NEW POLITICAL FORCE is centered in the Democratic party, though it draws upon a variety of nonparty sources: it expresses a strongly felt desire among millions of people for social reform that will attack some inequities of our society...
Vol. 19 • September 1972 • No. 4
