BLACKS & WHITE LIBERALS-A NEW RELATIONSHIP

...Revivalist vagueness and self-dramatization as a substitute for argument should be brought to an end...

...By 1988, all that Chicago black Democrats would remember is that in 1983 Walter Mondale and Edward Kennedy backed Jane Byrne and Richard Daley for mayor and that in 1987 the party's leaders still couldn't bring themselves to support Harold Washington...

...But such criticism fails to take into account the degree to which the Democrats' dilemma is produced by objective electoral realities rather than merely by neoliberal failures of nerve...

...It is striking that two of the four platform planks that Jackson chose to contest in San Francisco in 1984 did not concern traditional civil rights issues.* In part, this is necessary and desirable...

...Where such issues are concerned, any party that wishes to remain in one piece will accommodate the intense concerns of its constituents...

...That is, they advocated less defense spending than the president did, opposed controversial weapons systems such as the MX, and tended to oppose the use of military force to achieve American foreign policy ends...

...government policies, or dissented within the liberal consensus...

...The hard ideological facts, however, remain...

...White Democratic leaders should realize that the first Jackson campaign and all it represented have irrevocably changed the "rules of engagement" in the Democratic party...

...When Carter lost that support in 1980, he lost his reelection bid (ideological liberals didn't like Carter by 1980, but, by and large, they still voted for him...

...White liberals should understand why it was, for example, wrong for Paul Tsongas to have run against Edward Brooke in 1978...

...and it was that message of defiance that gave his candidacy its resonance...

...No Democratic candidate can win the presidency without massive black support, but a left-leaning candidate fully acceptable to Jesse Jackson will share the fates of McGovern and Mondale...

...In discussing the Democratic party's ideological stance, black and white liberal activists should bear in mind the following recent history...

...It is this grim electoral problem that obsesses party leaders like Democratic National Chairman Paul Kirk and to worry about it is neither unrealistic nor ignoble...

...A sense of embattled loyalty to persecuted members of one's own group gives rise to feelings of great intensity, and it is foolish and self-defeating to argue that such feelings have no place in political debate...

...It had been part of the Democratic party's institutional racism that blacks were expected to be seen and not heard on foreign policy and other issues deemed to be of no concern to them (i.e., on all issues but civil rights "At the Democratic convention, Jackson delegates sought unsuccessfully to amend the party platform by proposing planks in support of a 20 percent reduction in the defense budget, and in favor of a "no first use" policy on nuclear weapons, as well as proposing planks in opposition to runoff primaries and in favor of explicit employment quotas for minorities...

...The second issue is that of delegate support "thresholds...

...and hostile to the United States and its allies from Central America (El Salvador) to the Middle East (Israel...

...They feel increasingly insulted by the assumption that southern whites will never vote for blacks even as they are expected obediently to support white Democrats...

...Walter Mondale and Geraldine Ferraro, tradi16 tional white liberal politicians with wholly white inner circles, never grasped this...

...Jesse Jackson is probably wrong when he says that the abolition of the runoff primary in the southern states would result in the election of many more blacks and white liberals to Congress...

...Many black leaders, including Jesse Jackson, have denounced the national Democratic party for "moving to the right" since 1984 and one can heartily agree that one Republican party is more than enough...

...He ignores the option white conservative Democrats have of voting Republican in general elections if "unacceptable" black or white liberal candidates win Democratic nominations in single primaries...

...18 issues...

...Tsongas ignored that, and treated Brooke as he would have treated any other Republican who suddenly seemed vulnerable...

...Carter won in 1976 because he received enough southern white, evangelical, and other socially conservative white working-class support to combine with his solid black vote to win such critical states as Tennessee and Ohio...

...It is simply not adequate to say that one is a "Baptist minister" interested in "reconciliation," as Jackson stated in response to criticism of his Cuban trip in 1984...

...For white liberal Democrats, political 1984 was a year that began in hope and ended in disaster...

...What does he believe Concerning the nature of the Soviet government and the degree, if any, of the threat it poses to the United States and to the survival of liberty in the world...

...By 1988, support for runoff primaries or equivocation concerning them is not going to be a tenable Democratic position if blacks are going to remain Democratic loyalists...

...Unlike his predecessors, Jackson did not seek accommodation and incremental change within the white political structure...

...He has expressed solidarity with Castro and called Reagan a "terrorist" after the retaliatory bombing of Libya...

...He is a self-proclaimed "ThirdWorld person" who has expressed a sense of "kinship" with the rulers of Syria and once called Zionism a "poisonous weed...

...If so, what is the program and who is the candidate...

...And who knows, perhaps by beginning as equals in negotiations we may end as partners in an alliance to reshape this country...

...SINCE THE GREAT SEA CHANGE occurred in American politics between 1964 and 1968, the Democratic party has lost every presidential election but one, the 1976 exception that proves the rule...

...The second subject is linked to the first...

...The party's leaders must also not resist black electoral empowerment...

...should cut off military aid to Israel in order to force its withdrawal from the West Bank...

...The party would be repaid in kind...

...The Democratic National Committee (DNC) has recently lowered from 20 to 15 percent the "threshold" of primary votes that presidential candidates need to win in individual congressional districts in order to secure delegates to the national convention...

...Blacks are coming to reject the larger assumption that southern white racism must everlastingly be bowed to in the Democratic party, which is, at the same time, the party of black America...

...The implicit belief of those national Democrats who support runoff primaries is that it is vastly better for southern blacks to be represented in Congress by white moderate Democrats than by white conservative Republicans...

...The 1987 Chicago mayoral campaign may furnish evidence of whether the Democratic leadership has learned anything from the past...

...White Democratic leaders should encourage this process in every way possible, even at the expense of personal ambition or traditional concepts of political loyalty...

...Arms control, the defense budget, or the proper level of M-1 in the money supply should not be debated in terms of the special needs of black Americans, at least primarily...

...At the very least, there should be a plank in the 1988 Democratic party platform opposing runoffs...

...These discussions should be premised on the absolute equality of all participants...

...HOWEVER, BEYOND THESE (far from trivial) specific changes in the party's platform and rules, what will be required from white Democratic leaders will be a psychological revolution...

...Until now, black leaders have tended either not to acknowledge that this problem exists or to argue that it can be solved through populist grievancecollecting (e.g., Jackson's "support" for bankrupt white farmers, oil workers, the Hormel strikers, etc...

...But for blacks, 1984 was much more than that...

...But it is essential...

...If any nationally prominent Democrats then support the party nominee against the black mayor, thirdparty fervor among blacks may well increase...

...It will also be necessary to have blacks at every level in campaign organizations, including the very top levels—or else black support will not be forthcoming...

...For example: In recent years, the plight of blacks in South Africa has become, for American blacks, an issue inspiring feelings comparable to those aroused in American Jews by threats to Israel...

...Unless a Democratic candidate can make inroads into this lost white constituency in 1988, he will never win the presidency...

...He is now the leader of an important social movement...

...White or black Democratic leaders who fail in 1988 to hear and understand that message are asking for trouble...

...After 350 years as a submerged and essentially voiceless political class, blacks have begun to achieve a modicum of real political power in this country, as exemplified by the congressional careers of William Gray and Charles Rangel...

...Lately, a new circumspection has informed his comments on the Middle East...

...What white Democrats can legitimately ask of blacks in this renegotiated relationship are, it seems to me, essentially three things: first, an end to willful ideological innocence on the part of some black leaders, particularly Jesse Jackson...

...Overcoming centuries of racism and condescension will not be easy...

...And it is most unlikely that southern white moderates who voted for Carter in 1976 and then switched to Reagan in 1980 and 1984 would be won back in 1988 by a Democratic party pushed to the left by fears of a Jackson defection...

...Are there a candidate and a program around which black and white Democrats and enough other Americans to add up to 51 percent of the electorate can rally...

...Brooke had been a good senator, and, at least as important, he was a symbol of pride to millions of blacks...

...For blacks, of whatever political outlook, the Jackson candidacy has become a shining moment, something to look back on with pride...

...His position, while perhaps moderate by the standards of the United Nations General Assembly, is extreme by the standards of postwar American politics...

...That sort of thing will not do any longer...

...FINALLY, THERE ARE TWO RACIALLY CHARGED issues left over from 1984, now quiescent, which will return to plague the Democrats in 1988...

...This breaks sharply with the past practices of mainstream civil rights leaders, who generally either were silent on foreign policy, backed U.S...

...Until the day before yesterday, members of the Black Caucus in Congress were essentially indistinguishable from their white liberal colleagues on foreign policy/defense issues...

...JACKSON'S VIEWS, HOWEVER, are not within the liberal consensus...

...Black participation in the debate over foreign policy or, for that matter, the Federal Reserve Board ought to be welcomed...

...The basic principle is that the threshold should be low enough for candidates with disproportionate strength in minority communities to have that strength reflected in their delegate totals...

...I would therefore consider it just as legitimate for black Democrats to argue for committing the party to the strongest possible position against apartheid as it is for Jews to argue for assistance to Israel...

...From now on, it will no longer be sufficient for white candidates to be "correct" on issues of concern to blacks...

...EVEN MORE IMPORTANT, the 1984 Jackson candidacy may well have changed forever the image of the ideal black political leader in the minds of blacks...

...Democratic leaders, who know that black voters are an indispensable part of any conceivable Democratic majority coalition, will no doubt take such threats seriously, in purely electoral terms...

...The Democratic party will have to start taking its black members seriously...

...What follows is a preliminary attempt (by a white Democrat whose politics are closer to Lane Kirkland's than to Jesse Jackson's) to grasp the significance of the recent evolution of black politics and to sketch out what I consider to be the new obligations which that evolution will impose on white and black Democrats if the party is to be kept together and have a fighting chance in 1988...

...If a given defense expenditure is (arguably) necessary for the security of the United States and/or the preservation of western democracy, then black Americans have as much of an interest in supporting it as any other group of Americans...

...second, a willingness to distinguish between issues concerning which blacks have a legitimate special interest and issues in which blacks have no more and no less of an interest than other citizens...

...A prominent feature of his second candidacy will probably be implicit or explicit threats to bolt the Democratic party and run as an independent in the general election if the "rainbow coalition" does not receive "fair" treatment from the party's leaders in the primary campaign...

...This is a step in the right direction, but I agree with black members of the DNC that the threshold should be lower still, perhaps 10 percent or 5 percent...

...But to argue in this way is to overlook the symbolic significance of the issue...

...And, given the racial composition of their staffs, neither do Gary Hart or Mario Cuomo...

...Instead, he defied it, or at least seemed to defy it...

...The party hierarchy will have to begin extending to black leaders the same respect and courtesy they would instinctively extend to a Robert Strauss or a Clark Clifford...

...What black and white Democrats need to discuss with each other is how this trap may be escaped...

...But they also backed aid to Israel, and quietly supported America's traditional alliance structure, while feeling with somewhat more urgency than most white liberals the need to isolate South Africa...

...There is a chance that Mayor Harold Washington will be defeated in the Democratic primary by a white candidate and will then run as an independent...

...If Jackson's position on foreign policy is now or is about to become the position of black Democratic activists, it is only fair that that position be spelled out with as much care and coherence as possible, in order, in part, to inform more traditional white (and black) Democrats how much of a contest lies ahead...

...But a distinction should be carefully drawn between issues concerning which blacks have a legitimate special interest and those concerning which they have neither more nor less of an interest than everyone else...

...What, for example, are Jackson's views on the NATO alliance, the defense treaty with South Korea, the legitimacy of the Duarte government in El Salvador, the nature of the New People's Army in the Philippines, and on whether the U.S...

...It was the year when an articulate black man ran for president, won millions of primary votes and hundreds of delegates, outlasted the majority of other candidates, commanded the attention of the world, and, at the Democratic convention, delivered a riveting speech that made those of Walter Mondale and Gary Hart look anemic by comparison...

...Arguments over such expenditures should be cast in terms of whether they do contribute to safeguarding American liberty and security, and racial special pleading should be left out of the debate...

...HOWEVER, ALL ISSUES CANNOT BE TRANSFORMED into such issues...

...The first is runoff primaries...

...Finally, there is the issue of coalitional forbearance...

...But unless comparable intellectual efforts are made, over the next two years, to understand why an independent black candidacy has become a credible idea and reasonable measures are adopted to meet legitimate black concerns, it is probable that no eleventh-hour attempts at conciliation in 1988 will head off an independent Jackson candidacy or prevent millions of disaffected black and some white Democrats from voting for him...

...But with each passing year that argument cuts less ice with blacks...

...and third and perhaps most difficult of all, a greater sense of electoral reality and coalitional forbearance than some black leaders now exhibit...

...17 In recent years, Jesse Jackson and like-minded black leaders have increasingly espoused an ideology which is sympathetic to "Third Worldism" (e.g., Syria, the PLO, Cuba, Nicaragua, etc...