An Unreal Majority
ABRAMS, ELLIOTT
An Unreal Majority The New Reformers: Forces for Change in American Politics By Stephen Schlesinger Houghton Mifflin. 256 pp. $7.95. Reviewed by Elliott Abrams Senator George McGovern's 1972...
...Will the Gays push hard for bilingual education or for raising minimum wages...
...He notes that in 1972 the great New Politics villains in the AFL-CIO supported tax reform, day care centers, national health insurance, and minimum family assistance...
...Schlesinger has an unfortunate habit of labeling as "conservative" virtually all who disagree with him...
...His concern is the "movement" McGovern seemed, for a time, to head?the New Reformers of the title...
...What common interests bind them together...
...A total commitment to Gay Lib or to women's rights, however laudable, may prevent Reformers from understanding that economic issues must be at the heart of the Democratic party's appeal, and must form the core of any coalition...
...The preconditions for building a strong, permanent political force seem to be absent here, for the key concerns of one faction tend at best to be entirely secondary issues to the others...
...Now in what sense do these "loosely allied" groups constitute a political movement at all...
...Schlesinger never answers the question...
...What is the basis for a grand coalition between upper-middle class whites whose litmus test of liberalism is still Vietnam, and a union leadership whose real political concerns are the bread and butter issues...
...He remarks, too, that his reformer's "solutions have converged with parts of a Democratic Socialist program," yet neglects to explore the basic contradictions between socialist working-class views and perspectives of the rich white liberals who finance and form a large segment of the New Reformers...
...There are other, less serious difficulties with the book...
...Schlesinger writes: "A movement for social reform in America exists today without a leader and without a party...
...But his book lacks an organizing overview of American politics, an analytical framework...
...The New Reformers, in short, does not contribute much to the debate on the future of the Democratic party...
...Stephen Schlesinger, however, does not follow the usual pattern of concentrating on McGovern's huge defeat and seeking to learn how the Democrats can avoid repeating it...
...Schlesinger's factual treatments of the various reform components are often very good...
...The author and some of his New Reformers may not be aware of this strong centrist position focusing on the economy because, for them, such matters simply are not crucial...
...He then refers to these objectives as a "few liberal emblems on the AFL-CIO's record," a formulation that can only mean Vietnam, and not economic issues, is the true test of the AFL-CIO's record...
...Similarly, although Schlesinger loudly calls for the New Reformers to join in building a majority coalition, he never clearly delineates what would hold that coalition together...
...It consists of almost a dozen loosely allied political groups made up of party reformers, women, blacks, liberal unions, white middle-class liberals, progressives in Congress, and the newly aroused minorities: Chicanos (Mexican-Americans), Puerto Ricans, Indians, and Gays...
...This failure to deal with conflicting interests is particularly odd, since several times Schlesinger seems close to seeing the problem...
...The difficulty becomes apparent in the first paragraph...
...He laments the absence of a "tenable 'center' position" in the Democratic party, somehow ignoring the fact that all of today's 10 or 12 Democratic Presidential candidates sound virtually identical on the key economic questions expected to dominate the '76 campaign...
...By my count, it is mentioned no less than 48 times in this slim volume...
...Given these shortcomings, it is not surprising that Schlesinger's conclusions appear confused...
...He is also overly impressed with the impact on American politics of the publication he founded, the now-defunct New Democrat...
...To believe this, he must have learned very little about the institutions and policies needed to make a coalition an enduring political force in this country...
...His descriptions of the development of the Democratic Study Group and the Black Caucus in the House of Representatives are particularly informative, and well worth reading...
...Reviewed by Elliott Abrams Senator George McGovern's 1972 Presidential campaign was a race that launched a thousand books, and this is the latest...
...indeed, he never even asks it...
...Schlesinger thinks that a combination of the alienated minorities and the white middle-class liberals constitutes a cohesive political movement...
...How vigorously will the feminists fight against state right-to-work laws...
...He notes in passing, for example, that Chicanos and Indians in the Southwest, and Puerto Rican and black groups in other areas, have been rivals more than allies...
Vol. 59 • January 1976 • No. 2
