GUT ISSUES IN THE ELECTION
Spinrad, William
All commentators seem to agree that the recent election was the most clear-cut representation of a party vote in a long time, and that the social composition of party allegiance more...
...And where do we go from here...
...The next major political 7 effort is to bring this regularly to their attention...
...Interestingly, few mentioned Carter by name...
...If either the White House or Congress fails to come through, they have no excuses...
...During a period of prolonged economic peril, such issues become all-important...
...All commentators seem to agree that the recent election was the most clear-cut representation of a party vote in a long time, and that the social composition of party allegiance more closely resembled the Roosevelt era than anything since...
...Their control of Congress is overwhelming and is not the result of any momentary fluke...
...whitecollar workers are as likely to vote Democratic as Republican...
...Many a pollster or journalist would stop there...
...What most political observers have to learn over and over again is that, whatever the special features of any particular situation, after a while politics comes back to the kinds of questions emphasized by sophisticated analysts, ranging, at least, from Marx to Madison—those concerning the control, direction, and distribution of society's economic resources...
...My own conjecture is that this was a result of the pussy-footing of Carter and other Democrats on the issues that made for national Democratic strength...
...How much of this reflected regional loyalty, including an assertion of a long-awaited return of the South to national respectability, and how much a genuine nationalization of southern politics is impossible to discern...
...In fact, the weakness of the candidates accentuated the importance of party identification...
...Actually, it may have been the perfect setting for a give-em-hell campaign, utilizing the language and fervor of someone like a healthy Hubert Humphrey, and thereby channeling more of the traditional Democratic support...
...The Democrats are now on the spot, which is where we should want them to be...
...WHY THEN was the presidential contest itself so close...
...A renewed drive for such things as .HumphreyHawkins and National Health Insurance is immediately in order...
...The nature of the party's national support is obvious...
...Perhaps national politics will he turned in the direction that socialists desire, a welcome deliverance from the miasma of the past decade...
...The opponents' charges about "big government" could have been countered by an emphasis on the most serious danger from government control over people's lives, the revealed operations of such agencies as the FBI and CIA...
...Especially if the New Deal coalition, constituting a decisive majority of the population, was not only reinvigorated but probably augmented...
...more of the affluent white Protestants vote Democratic...
...Instead, he queried them about how they expected to vote and why...
...Interviewing voters in the predominantly Catholic, blue-collar, and lower white-collar Canarsie section of Brooklyn, which had experienced some nasty conflicts over school integration, the reporter found that busing was still, apparently, the issue uppermost in their minds...
...One small New York Post account in the middle of September set the agenda, for me, 6 fairly early in the campaign...
...q 8...
...The typical answer took some form of this assertion: "naturally, in this economic situation we are going to vote Democratic...
...But the dominant tendency was the classic lineup of low-income, working-class, union, out-ethnic voters on the Democratic side, which inherently means a decisive Democratic majority in the electorate (as true of the South as of any other part of the country...
...Obviously, one cannot ignore the fact that the most dramatic component of Carter's personal victory was his success in the South, reversing the trend of more than 20 years...
...Both Carter and Mondale shunned espousal of the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill, even when prodded by their opponents...
...It was an occasion for an old-fashioned attack on the fat cats, now so perfectly symbolized by the multinational corporations...
...Hoover or Landon struggle, influencing even those who scarcely know anything about any of them...
...The explanation, which some of the pollsters were able to note after they shunted aside their overelaborate methodologies, was simply the predominance of traditional economic concerns in a time of crisis...
...Naturally, some features were different...
...However, another type of candidate could easily have compensated for southern losses by carrying the northern and western industrial states that gave Ford a razor-edge margin, and would have compiled a much large popular vote...
...Let others work at fruitless speculations about shifts to the "right" or "left," ponder the future of Democratic "liberals," or attempt to probe Carter's personality...
...Almost three-fourths thought the economy was getting worse, and Carter led by a two-to-one margin among this group...
...large-scale southern black voting has become a regular pattern...
...But this was not the orientation of the major Democratic campaigners, partly because of the views of Carter himself, partly because of mistaken notions about public attitudes among his staff...
...I prefer to concentrate on possible developments in public policy...
...Apparently convinced by pollsters and their own political operatives, they bought the assessment of a "conservative mood," accepted too much of the political agenda proposed by their opponents, and became defensive about their own proposals...
...Despite all the talk about general fear of "big government" and high taxes, most people want government programs to satisfy pressing needs...
...The suburbs are now bipartisan...
...A CBS-New York Times poll in early October should have indicated the temper of the electorate...
...Probably only a southern candidate could have carried so many southern states, although it is necessary to point out that the Carter margin was, in several states, a result of heavy black support...
...Both the poll's sponsors and commentators ignored such findings and devoted themselves instead to trivia, including laborious efforts to determine "who won the debates," or demonstrating that those more worried about unemployment tended to support the Democrats and those more anxious about inflation the Republicans, as though one had to make a choice as to which of these two evils was more troublesome...
...In essence, it is safe to conclude that, whatever else may bother American voters, a serious economic slump will restore, to the center of the political arena, a replica of the old Roosevelt vs...
...The most obvious manifestation was the amazing continuity in Democratic congressional dominance, about the same as what followed the post-Watergate victories of 1974...
Vol. 24 • January 1977 • No. 1
