Moving Beyond the New Deal

...The first of these crises is the inability of America to find the necessary funds to deal with the problems of schools, housing, health care, the aging, poverty, and hunger...

...Unless the Democrats can--after 1972--go beyond the New Deal toward income and wealth redistribution, internal pressures will become explosive...

...He is not apathetic: He prefers to vote his feelings and thoughts, rather than talk about them...

...To begin with there was Nixon himself, sensing a chance to make history...

...Gus Tyler, a frequent contributor, is Assistant President of the ILGWU...

...If they do not firm up their mass base--blue-collar worker, hardhat, white as well as black and brown ethnics--a rise in employment or disorder could lose these elements to the Gop...

...Although the Supreme Court has called for districts of equal population, it has not insisted on rational boundaries--thanks in part, ironically, to Republican resistance...

...In 1966, Nixon boasted that his party had "a 25 per cent better chance to win" the Presidency than in 1960 because Gop governors had increased from 14 to 25...

...But the '70s pose much different challenges...

...PRIORITIES FOR THE 70s Moving Beyond the New Deal BY GUS TYER Thanks to the 1970 elections, the Democratic party has the chance for a lifetime...

...The first was Kevin Phillips' The Emerging Republican Majority, which espoused a "populist conservatism" that would care for the needs of the common man while avoiding bizarre social tinkering and recurrent disorder...

...The last four decades have created the illusion of income and wealth distribution...

...In short, the Administration played the '70 campaign with high stakes in money and political repute...

...In the Senate races, they supported Democrats only--doves and hawks alike...

...Recycling and useful conversion of byproducts and waste ought to become giants in the economy, too, offering still more jobs...

...Then came the economic elite, who, after a short-term caper with Eisenhower, were now looking for a long-term political investment...

...Our cities are choking because more than 70 per cent of the nation's people are now crammed into 1.5 per cent of the land area...

...These party theoreticians found ideological underpinnings by misreading two books on the political temper of our times...

...Consequently, every battle to reorder domestic priorities becomes a squabble among the nonrich as to how to divide their collective scarcity...

...In this year's campaign, the White House occupant was not out to win an election in '70 so much as to win the nation for the '70s...

...Finally, the political pros like Frank Shakespeare, Leonard Garment, Murray Chotiner, H. R. Hal-deman, et al., inclined to set a track record of unbroken wins...

...In the Senate races, where 25 Democratic and only 10 Republican seats were in contest, the Republicans looked for seven wins to gain control...

...As a result, several million Americans (about a million a year) were driven from the soil to the cities--the greatest migration ever on the face of the earth in so short a time--precipitating a clash of cultures that has turned our streets into battlefields...

...In 17 states, both governor and legislature are Democratic, compared to 10 such for the Gop...

...and since the Vietnam escalation (1965), the take-home buying power of the American worker has gone down...

...S & W advised the Democrats to win back their proletarian base by defusing the social and pushing the economic issue...

...But neither income nor wealth were redistributed...

...The day after the balloting, George Meany read the result as "a mandate to the Administration to stop trying to deceive the people about the real state of the nation's economic dilemma, which has been created by the ill-advised fiscal and monetary policies of the Administration...

...Republican leaders saw 1970 as the gateway to an era of Gop rule...

...This is a pluralistic society--the Italians vote as Italians, Irish as Irish, that's the way it is...

...Power in the states meant power to gerrymander Congress for Republican control right down to decade's end...

...In a lesser way, 1970 was another 1932...

...If they assume that the "social issue" (crime, drugs, campus disorder) is dead, they will be dead...

...To add steam to this Rightward trend, the Administration worked skillfully to cool the war issue and refuel the crime and campus issues...

...Middlesocio-economically and geographically...

...The biggest Gop losses were in the "heartland": a net of 10 House seats and nine governorships...

...The current fad of resolving the environmental peril by halting economic growth--which lowers living standards and increases unemployment--is politically intolerable, economically undesirable, and simply unnecessary...

...The mass base of this movement would be Mr...

...Cleanup should become one of our greatest industries, rivaling the auto...

...The Republicans lost it because it is not possible to establish a populist base (conservative or otherwise) on lower employment and higher prices--even with the dramaturgy of canned confrontat'on...

...In the House, where the party in power regularly loses seats in a midterm election, the Gop did not have many marginal districts to lose and so could claim that it stemmed the midterm tide...

...Holding or increasing the number in 1970 was crucial not only for the '72 Presidential race but--far more basic--for the redisricting of congressional seats in 1971-72...

...The charge of California labor chief John Hennings, that "President Nixon personally aggravated and provoked the San Jose students for political purposes," was repeated in saloons as well as salons...

...The 1970 RETURNS should tell the Democratic party much about the present manner and mind of the voter...

...These superrich own more than one third the nation's wealth...

...He is not unsophisticated: He knows how to split tickets and, somehow, to get results that mirror his own inner conflicts...

...To strengthen the populist base of his conservatism, Nixon wooed labor fervently, missing no chance to be seen with George Meany on the golf course or on the question of Vietnam...

...Of all the COPE-endorsed candidates for public office, 61 per cent were elected as against 56 per cent in 1968...

...In California, the same electorate returned Ronald Reagan as Governor and replaced Max Rafferty with a black man as State School Superintendent...

...We could start by disowning planned obsolescence--with its deliberate waste of materials, manpower and consumer dollars--and providing for the retraining and placement of workers thus displaced...

...They will tell much about whether Richard Nixon heads a new coalition that is to dominate the scene for decades to come, or whether his victory was merely a casual break in the continuing reign of the Democratic dynasty...

...The unions, after sitting with Nixon on Labor Day, stood with the Democrats on Election Day...

...Later they misread Richard Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg's The Real Majority, written as a reply to Phillips...

...Population redistribution is equally vital...

...A rational redistribution of populations in the next 25 years, with total population expanding, must include a long-range, Federally financed program of new towns and cities--to decongest our central cities, to revive ghost towns and counties...

...What haunts us is that the old bosses would never have let this happen...

...All this presupposes a policy to pursue multiple policies: on population, land use, waste, commodity manufacture, allocation of resources, air, water, fuel, income distribution...

...While the voter does fear crime and disorder, he is not about to be stampeded by partisan misuse of the issue...

...Mathematically, too, 1970 promised to be a good year for the Gop...

...While ending the Vietnam war would be helpful, the peace dividend will not be big and, even if it were bigger, it would be inadequate...

...The party lost nine seats in the House this year plus three in 1969 special elections, for a net loss of 12 seats as against 1968...

...This* means that Nixon is the only President since the Taylor-Fillmore Administration (1849-1852) whose party failed to control either house of Congress for even one session...

...This would also be a major step toward meeting our ecologic crisis, although by no means the total answer...

...Senate gains were negligible--just two seats...

...But the Republican majority failed to emerge...

...If they take '72 for granted, they are likely to tear themselves apart by factional wars for nominations and party control...

...But the Republican party's real strength was with the governors...

...To meet current and coming crises the Democratic party must move beyond the New Deal...

...Although the Democrats are now in a good position for 1972, their apparent strength can become their prime weakness...

...If the gerrymander is let loose in '71, it will devour as many Republicans as Democrats...

...The traditional Democrats--the enrolled majority in America--have been reminded that when Republicans go to the White House, recession comes to your own house...

...The Democrats now have 29 of the 50 governors...

...Ironically, the biggest Democratic disappointments were in their projected "headland": New York, Connecticut and Vermont...

...At the White House this was trans-slated as advice to the Gop to win the worker by inflating the social to obscure the economic issue...

...A rational program could raise the standard of living--both quantitatively and qualitatively--by the simple elimination of waste...

...Shortly after Richard Nixon's inauguration, I wrote in The New Leader ("1970: Year of Decision," February 17, 1969) that "the 1970 elections will be a weather vane for American politics, revealing more about the direction of our national life than the Presidential contest of 1968...

...The funds are not available because the income and wealth of America are at present locked up in the hands of a top 1 per cent...

...He also advised Nixon to curb the "Vice President's vicious tongue...

...He donned the hard hat...

...We got it, and it gave us a ticket so unbalanced ethnically and geographically that we didn't have a chance...

...And to measure the impact of an ethnically unbalanced ticket on the electorate, Democrats should note the comment of Paul O'Dwyer, a leader of New York's New Democratic Coalition: "We--the Reformers--all wanted a statewide primary...

...they have an income equal to that of the bottom 40 per cent...

...Yet,during the last two decades, half the counties in the nation have lost population...

...The trend toward populist conservatism seemed to be confirmed by the 1969 municipal elections in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and even New York, where the combined conservative-minded John Marchi and Mario Procaccino vote out-polled John Lindsay handsomely...

...Above all, however, Democrats must realize that they did not win the game this year...

...Ecologic renaissance will require a comprehensive, multi-trillion dollar program--a national plan concerned with the socio-economic as well as the chemico-physical aspects of environmental renewal...

...The top of the Democratic ticket skinned through in New York City, while the more balanced slate of candidates for Congress, State Senate and Assembly swept the city by better than two-to-one...

...Provided, that is, that it thinks psephologically beyond 1972 and programmatically beyond the New Deal...

...The illusion rose from the fact that an expanding Gross National Product increased per capita income in the country...

...He was using the power of the Presidency, narrowly achieved, to build a lasting conservative coalition based on a comfortable majority...

...the issue is real and must be confronted realistically...

...If Democrats want to measure the impact of the social issue on the blue-collar worker, they should note the election of New York Conservative James Buckley to the Senate...

...A serious determination to restore our environment could mean a return to full employment...

...were turning their blue collars GOPward and that Dixie could become a belated extension of the "heartland" by the Southern strategy...

...To measure the damage of internal party division, they should note the disasters of the Connecticut races for U. S. Senator and governor...

...Such an integrated program would restore the original and nobler meaning of politics: the art and science of making policies...

...He was the first President to invite union leaders to celebrate Labor Day at the White House...

...The first, executed by subsidized scientists, was to increase agricultural productivity: It worked...

...Republican pros read this to mean that the white ethnics (middle-class...

...This deadly urban density is the unnoticed, although inevitable, end product of two New Deal policies that were considered good in their time...

...Indeed, since the end of World War II, wealth has become more concentrated...

...By 1968, this figure rose to 32...

...O'Dwyer's rhetoric exaggerates ethnic cohesion, but there is much truth in his argument...

...The second, carried through by subsidized farmers, was to decrease agricultural production: It also worked...