COMMENTS: Four More Years
Howe, Irving
We print below some hasty remarks on the election result, written a fe'w days after the election. By the time you read these, you are likely to know more than did these authors. Still, first...
...No doubt, there are all kinds of reasons for this, ranging from an antifeminist backlash to delusionary notions about military strength...
...Does this mean, however, a final breakup of the New Deal coalition...
...In the next issue, we'll be back with more considered analyses...
...fostering a mindless militarization that channels vast resources wastefully to the Pentagon...
...What follows is less ambitious, a mere personal response written three days after the election...
...and the ranks, evidence that over years of relative well-being the leaders have failed to educate, day by day, their own members...
...More and more, American democracy is being debased in behalf of American plutocracy...
...Let us recall briefly what the Reagan heritage really is—and if you know it only too well, skip to the next point...
...Remember that two years ago, when the recession was at its worst, Reagan's popularity ratings were lower than those of Carter at his lowest...
...America as the showcase of individual enterprise...
...The largest defeat in the election was probably suffered by the labor movement, which gambled heavily on Mondale and lost...
...Liberalism will reassert itself, in full vigor or pale ambiguity, for the roots of liberalism in America run deep...
...There are a few positive facts: the nomination of a woman for national office, the large-scale entry of blacks into politics, the steadiness of the Jewish vote despite the Reaganite flirtation of the Commentary crowd...
...But at this moment, when they have been battered by recession, the collapse of major industries, and a hostile administration, every liberal and democratic leftist with a touch of fellow feeling will want to show solidarity with the American unions...
...Some, of course, we can see...
...But not automatically...
...Many of the people 6 mouthing phrases about free enterprise will be screaming for government intervention in our socioeconomic life...
...But a defeat it was, and it cannot be explained simply by citing President Reagan's popularity...
...Sentiments of community shrink...
...There is a wish to undo the trauma and moral shame of the Vietnam War, to stem the advances or changes in "life style" of the last few decades, to recover an image of this country as unmarred and unshaken...
...But the unions would be doing themselves a disservice if they did not think hard and long about the seeming alienation between leadership...
...But the fundamental ideas and values that animated the New Deal coalition—really, a liberallabor coalition—remain as valid as ever...
...But about the values by which we live—our criticism of the status quo, our belief in democratic social reform—we should be unyielding...
...systematically thwarting (with the help of the Soviet bureaucrats) any effort at arms control...
...the struggle for its defense and extension will continue...
...Criticize the unions, urge upon them a range of self-transformations—fine...
...pandering to the most benighted prejudices in the country, such as those of the Moral Majority...
...That a man of such mental limitations should become a national hero can only be attributed to his intuitive skills at reaching and sharing the sentiments of many Americans, sentiments clearly in opposition to liberalism (to say nothing of the left...
...Let there be a year or two from now the kind of recession we had in the midst of Reagan's first term, and everything will look different...
...sentiments of compassion elicit ridicule...
...ALL OF THIS HAS LED to a new atmosphere in the country...
...The reigning values are those of crass acquisitiveness, proud selfishness, and callous indifference to the suffering of others...
...As for the intellectuals, what has begun as a rightward shuffle could now turn into a stampede, with the "herd of independent minds," as Harold Rosenberg once caustically described them, taking conservatism to their hearts as 15 years ago many took New Leftism...
...The danger for both liberals and democratic socialists is clear—yield to the rightward drift and thereby annul your reason for existence or insulate yourself in a cell of fundamentalist righteousness...
...The social components and organizational supports of the New Deal coalition will probably never again be what they once were...
...All too many people seem to feel no shame about their Social Darwinist posturing...
...Ens...
...American liberalism will have to wake up from its comfortable doze and start afresh...
...How," many will ask themselves, "how could we have been so self-deluded as to be caught up in this epidemic of foolishness...
...The list could be expanded for pages...
...A major reinvigoration of the unions is needed, something easy to say but by no means easy to accomplish...
...There is a wish throughout the nation to restore the United States to a pristine condition it never had, a wish to pull it out of the bloodying realities of recent history...
...What the economic recovery did was to free many people of their immediate anxieties about livelihood and enable them to turn their attention to such less tangible but emotionally charged matters as "national pride," abortion, and "strength...
...and the sheer power of money to dominate elections— these are facts that ought to be troubling serious people of every persuasion...
...but meanwhile, Dr...
...About ideas we should be receptive...
...American liberalism is in grave trouble and so, almost as a corollary, is the democratic left...
...The economic recovery—partial, fragile, and with an explosive potential for serious trouble in the next few years—was evidently crucial in shifting many votes to Reagan...
...Our public life grows emptier and emptier...
...1. Irving Howe Of postmortems there will be no end...
...We are living through a moral reaction...
...They take pride in its assertion, as if manliness were macho, and arrogance individualism...
...TV "debates" that aren't debates at all but by their very structure make superficiality and slickness inescapable...
...It is a heritage of: brutal cuts in help for the poor...
...The welfare state has been battered, but much of it survives...
...The representative figure of this Zeitgeist, the hero of our time, is J.R...
...America as the toughest nation on earth— and we showed them in Grenada, didn't we...
...But it has worked brilliantly to veil the increasing power of business, its grasping greed...
...sanctioning an illegal "covert" war against Nicaragua with CIA directives that propose the use of fascist-Stalinist methods...
...The disastrous racial split in Southern politics, with all-too-many whites signaling their prejudices through the Republican party, indicates a breakdown of one of the (less attractive) pillars of the New Deal coalition...
...Still, first impressions may have their value...
...We may expect the "natural" oscillations of our politics to recur, bringing an opportunity for liberal renewal...
...But this isn't enough of an explanation...
...And major socialtechnological changes make it unlikely that certain industrial centers in the Midwest will soon, if ever, be able to regain their political power...
...A new liberal coalition will require new inner relationships...
...About strategies and tactics we should be flexible...
...7...
...the influence of pollsters in shaping opinions they are supposed to chart...
...Serious people will beware of instant analyses declaring basic political realignments...
...That popularity itself is a sign and consequence of conservative moods—can you imagine a Ronald Reagan being adored at a moment of liberal upsurge...
...Perhaps the most alarming trend—and one that I see no immediate way of coping with—is what I'd call the degeneration of the democratic process...
...More serious, still, is the fact that the labor leadership could not hold the political allegiance of almost half its membership...
...See, for instance, Morton Kondracke in the New Republic and the Wall Street Journal, where he describes himself as a "neo-lib, neo-con," as if to disarm critics in advance...
...HARD TIMES LIE AHEAD...
...constant stress, begun by the media and passively taken over by masses of viewers, on the "performance" of candidates rather than on their opinions or programs...
...Meanwhile, it seems likely that labor's influence within the Democratic party is going to decline— indeed, the first visible effect of Reagan's landslide on our political life may well be a rightward shift by the Democrats, both within and outside of Congress...
...the most severe recession in America since the Second World War...
...And what will happen a few years from now—just as after the collapse of the New Left...
...5 a National Labor Relations Board so biased in favor of business that some unions have simply stopped taking appeals to it...
...I'd be careful before agreeing to that notion...
...All this, I suspect, barely hides a deep anxiety about personal futures and national well-being...
...tax legislation redistributing wealth in the direction of the rich...
...30-second "spots" that corrupt intelligence...
...There are a few consoling features, most of all the failure of the Republicans to take the House of Representatives...
...It was a severe defeat...
...America as the home of traditional values, cozily partnered by God...
...Feelgood, the Hollywood medicine man, strokes and assuages and uplifts...
...The time of "neoliberalism" has come— that amorphous creed which cannot now be dismissed out of hand, even though some of the social attitudes associated with it irritate people like me...
...That this sincerely felt vision, part of the postVietnam reaction about which Nicolaus Mills writes elsewhere in this issue, is a concoction of fantasy and yearning may be true...
...an increased percentage of the population falling into poverty...
Vol. 32 • January 1985 • No. 1
