Coalitions Old and New

...In 1928, for example, the afl convention voted down Federal unemployment insurance...

...The conception was born out of despair...

...The great "middle" class, with its middle-aged and aged, is either to be ignored totally or picked up later as an electioneering afterthought...

...Kennedy was nominated, and he named LBJ as his running mate...

...The liberals were divided in 1960 between Humphrey and Stevenson as first choice, were highly suspicious of John F. Kennedy, and totally opposed to Lyndon B. Johnson...

...The only thing that remains constant in the talk and double-talk is the one word, "coalition...

...If there is anything certain in politics, it is that they will once again do so in 1972...

...Despite her maturity, she flings herself at the young, the new politics and the New Left, while turning her back on her tried and true lovers...

...Added the young, black, militant Bond: "I think that's something that's likely to happen in this country—that you're going to see that kind of division...

...Because so many of these affluents and their children were active in his campaign, there arose a belief that the vanguard for progress in America was no longer to be found in the "proletariat" but in the "bourgeoisie...

...Roosevelt herself, formed a "government-in-exile" that came to be known as the Americans for Democratic Action (ada...

...representing a rebirth of the Socialist, Populist, and Farmer-Labor movements...

...The most obvious device was a major political organization with a reasonably homogeneous philosophy, capable of electing a President who would propose party policies and congressmen who would not oppose their own man in the White House...

...The end result would be an alliance of top and bottom without middle...

...The liberal favorites were Estes Kefauver and, in some circles, Averell Harriman...

...She turns herself topsy-turvy as the affluent are termed progressive and the nonaffluent are marked reactionary...

...The then Democratic President, Harry S. Truman, appeared unable, or unwilling, to stem the conservative tide...

...In 1964, the liberal choices for President and Vice President, Johnson and Humphrey, both made it unanimously...

...If Bond is right, and he probably is, party realignment will come to pass...

...Thus, in the many conventions from 1944-64, the last was the only one in which the liberals seem to have had their wish granted...

...At the Democratic party convention, the liberals wanted the renomination of Henry A. Wallace for the Vice Presidency...

...Although he had vetoed the Taft-Hartley Law, he did not have either the charisma or the clout to get even one-third of Congress to back him up...

...in other words, a variant of the age-old political coalition between aristocrat and peasant against the yeoman-free-man...

...The first step in this process was to be the organization of a liberal-labor alliance that would provide the progressive backbone of an ideologically and organizationally restructured Democratic party...

...The second, "Puncturing the Liberal Illusion" (NL, March 3), dealt with the failure of liberals to take control in Washington...

...ada evolved directly out of the Union for Democratic Action (uda), which had been formed some years earlier by ex-Socialist party members who wanted a progressive voice in support of America's war against Hitler...

...The result of their effort was that FDR dumped Wallace and selected a then somewhat conservative border state man, Harry S. Truman...

...Tyler, Assistant President of ilgwu, is the author of many books, including the forthcoming The Great American Riots...

...Even those that had leaned toward a socialist or labor party preferred to work within the two-party system...

...The controversy develops over what actually happened to this movement for realignment...

...Negro and veteran vote...

...Party realignment upon a liberal-labor base was already in the works, urged on by the dynamics of history and social evolution...

...Aside from 1964-68, the liberals have run every national convention in the last 36 years...

...Their experiences, as well as their discovery or acceptance of the coalition character of American politics and parties, turned them away from third-partyism for theoretical, pragmatic and emotional reasons...

...Since then, there have been many reevaluations of that "coalition," with most of the rhetoric loosely jerry-built to meet passing fads or personal ambitions...

...The concept of party realignment further reflected the growing desire for an overall political intelligence to guide the nation...

...In effect, uda was an educational society...

...The expectation was that a new major party would emerge, one committed to the welfare state...

...Stevenson won an easy renomination four years later, backed by liberals, the machines and the South...

...The Populists, with their dissident rural elements, had moved the American farmer out of the gop en masse and into the Democratic fold...

...and with ready-made appeals to newly awakened elements in the society—workers of immigrant stock, blacks, young veterans of World War II...

...The Democratic party was chosen because the people to whom a liberal, or even radical, appeal was to be addressed had been drifting into it since the turn of the century...

...It was one of Eugene McCarthy's great strengths that he was able to appeal to upper-income groups that had traditionally been conservative...

...But Truman was nominated...

...In the process, they left the party of the Great Emancipator for the party of the Great Humanitarian...

...the youth will provide the additional numbers for victory...

...In addition, most of the unions had always avoided splinter parties and were now more than ever convinced that they belonged in the mainstream, especially after their many gains under FDR...

...At the next national convention in 1948, the liberals launched a drive to dump Truman...

...Yet it is precisely the 1964 convention that Fritchey sees as inaugurating "the brief LBJ interregnum" that broke the otherwise uninterrupted liberal regency in the Democratic party from 1932 to the present...

...On such a premise, a broad coalition could be built across lines of color, age, ethnic origin, and even international policy...

...While it is generally agreed that no one social grouping—the proletariat, the poor, the intellectuals—can come to power democratically without allies, dispute continues as to whether the coalition ever in fact existed, or succeeded, or is still alive, or is dead and ready for replacement...

...Farmer-Labor and progressive voting legions toward Democratic candidates (most notably FDR) and into the Democratic party...

...I plan to examine these proposals...

...The Republicans ended price and wage controls, which gave a new lift to inflation, and enacted the Taft-Hartley Law to curb the unions...

...The cio had already formed a political force in its Political Action Committee...

...This dual development encouraged the notion of Democratic party realignment along liberal-labor lines...

...After 1912, under President Woodrow Wilson, labor edged toward the Democrats...

...Hence, the idea of a "new coalition" developed, in which the well-educated and the well-heeled would be the makers and movers of political progressivism in the U.S...

...For one thing, the intellectual leaders of the realignment movement had, in many cases, been through the Socialist party experiment...

...It is now time to take stock: to recall how the original idea came into being and see how the effect has fared...

...In my next piece...

...The third, "Uncovering the Riches" (NL, March 17), concerned income redistribution...

...Seen through the Vietnam glass, the liberal coalition becomes an old hag dancing on her head before an audience of young swingers...

...A number of outstanding Roosevelt people, most notably Mrs...

...This turn to the affluent is a total rejection of the philosophy underlying the liberal-labor coalition, whose fundamental conception was rooted in the inevitable struggle between those who live by working and those who live by owning...

...The premise was not new, of course...

...Here, for example, is the way Clayton Fritchey, a distinguished and informed columnist, reads its development: "The party that lost the election last year [1968] because of a fatal split between the liberals and the Johnson-Humphrey combination of Regulars and Southern conservatives is once more under the control of the forces which (except for the brief LB J interregnum) have dominated it since Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932...

...His first article in this series, "1970: Year of Decision" (NL, February 17), focused on the next national election...

...known as the "do-nothing" Congress—a handy campaign misnomer for a "do-evil" Congress...

...The answer is Vietnam—a crazy lens that has distorted our political sights on many matters, including the nature of the liberal movement in America...

...Middle" (NL, April 14) and "Insurrection of the In-Be-twecns" (NL, April 28), Gus Tyler examined the frustrations of the contemporary American middle class and traced the historical background of current tensions...

...They proposed several alternate candidates, including Dwight D. Eisenhower...

...Why didn't these elements choose to create a third party...

...The dedication many of them had to a world without war, economic progress and racial integration was embodied in the programs of the small but influential American Veterans' Committee (avc...

...the afl unions created a permanent political machinery through Labor's League for Political Education (llpe...

...But after FDR's death, it decided to emerge from its sectarian shell and enter the mainstream of national politics in a merger with progessive-minded Democratic politicos...

...In recent days, bases for new coalitions have been advanced by Donald Peterson, cochairman of the New Democratic Coalition, by Arthur Schlesinger, and by John Kenneth Galbraith...

...The machines, led by Chicago boss and head Regular Colonel Jake Arvey, trotted out Adlai Stevenson, who upon nomination named Alabama's Senator John Sparkman for Vice President...

...the black poor will provide votes...

...The move formalized a trend that had started in 1932: the steady drift of the old Socialist...

...Missiles and Money" (NL, March 31), the fourth, examined the relationship between arms control and domestic reform...

...Since the Depression, the blacks of America had been changing residence, jobs and politics...

...Why such an upside-down reading...

...In 1948, too, American politics was affected by a new generation of prematurely grown-up young men just returned from World War II...

...A similar trend was evident in the 1928 elections among immigrant ethnic groups—especially the Catholics who were so prominent in trade union ranks...

...Georgia legislator Julian Bond recently noted that "a Negro newspaper editor in Georgia almost 100 years ago . . . said that, in the end, the rich will be found on one side, whether they are black or white, and the poor will be found on the other, whether they are black or white...

...The dem ?Draft Eisenhower Movement—was the full expression of liberal despair with Truman...

...Both the liberal and labor response was organizational...

...Now compare the rhetoric with the reality, starting with 1944?FDR's last term...

...In 1952, liberal young politicos were tilting at the old machines, eager to expose their conservatism and corruption...

...llpe represented a profound break with the past for many of the most conservative afl unions...

...The need was felt for national (and international) goals, and for a mechanism to express the electoral will...

...The new coalitionists propose variants on a basic theme: The white affluents will provide the leadership...

...The 1946-48 session came to be In his last two articles, "The Revolt of Mr...

...The year 1948 also marked the emergence of the Negro as a revivified issue and force in American life...

...They chose the candidates, wrote the platforms, and managed the campaigns...

...As the Negroes turned to the Democrats, the "solid" South began to split up...

...Against this background, the coalition idea was not some invention of a theoretician...

...In the midterm elections of 1946, the Republican party captured control of both houses of Congress for the first time since the victory of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932...

...But his forecast could be frustrated if articulate liberal (or radical) leaders seek new coalitions based on race, age and education, rather than class...

...William Jennings Bryan—the dominant party figure from 1886-1912 —was more a Populist than a Democrat...

...Many of the AVCcrs spoke for a "new politics," ultimately winning posts as congressmen, senators and governors—generally on the Democratic ticket...

...About most of the above there is little disagreement...

...The 1948 Dixiecrat walkout and revolt against Truman, along with Hubert Humphrey's right for a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform that same year, pointed up the division in the party and the possibility for a "new party" grouped around the liberal-labor...

...In a steady stream, they poured out of the rural South into the manufacturing cities of the North, where they joined unions during the great industrial organizing drives of the 1930s and '40s...

...She is dismembered as blue-collar workers go one way, generally backing the war, and liberal intellectuals go the other way...

...Under Roosevelt, the Negroes joined the party...

...America's great problems, it was realized, could no longer be resolved in bits and pieces at the local level, as they had been in an earlier rural era...

...Other unions were content to "endorse"—to put a union label on a candidate?and let it go at that, llpe committed the once apolitical unions to maintenance of a New Deal-type program through a permanent electoral effort...

...Coalitions Old and New By Gus Tyler In 1948, talk began about "party realignment"—a conscious effort to regroup existing political forces into a new two-party system along liberal versus conservative lines...

...Some had traditionally rejected Federal electoral activity for socioeconomic purposes...