Mondale's Chances in November

...Their vote has been increasing for some time, as evidenced by the election of black mayors in Philadelphia, Gary, Chicago, Newark, Atlanta, Birmingham, Los Angeles...

...He would probably have won anyhow, but the electoral vote gap between the Republicans and Democrats would have been much smaller...

...When, after a spell, they can no longer pay the rent, they open shop on the sidewalk...

...All he did after putting large numbers of people out of work during 1981-82 is bring the country back to where Jimmy Carter left it...

...Like the stereotype says, women are more "feeling...

...they represent a profound stirring among the black citizens of America...

...The big question is the black turnout...

...But the turnout will also be energized by the anger the Administration has kindled with its display of disrespect for women perse and for the values they hold dear...

...because they grew up in an era when the government did intervene in the economy to save the nation from the Great Depression...

...If by November 1984 the jobless rate is still falling (even slightly) and the growth rate is still positive, Reagan's claims will appear to be valid for many...

...Thus out of 113 persons pursuing these miserable occupations, 89 were discharged factory hands...

...Running as a third-party independent in 1980, Anderson held the balance of power in 13 states, including some with heavy electoral votes...

...True, most unionists preferred him to Reagan, yet not enough of them felt that way...

...The average real wage of the nonsupervisory employee is today 14 per cent below what it was in 1972...

...They are also more "voting...

...Blacks will be counted in greater numbers this year than in the past not simply because of the Jackson candidacy, though, meaningful as that has been...

...Somewhat ironically, it would therefore be difficult for him to call upon his people to boycott the Democratic ticket, because they won't —any more than John L. Lewis' miners would vote against Roosevelt in 1940 when Lewis was indulging a private pique...

...As an early calculation issued by the Reverend Jesse Jackson's campaign this year pointed out, a larger black turnout in 1980 could have affected enough electoral votes to have returned Carter...

...The unions this year made a historic breakthrough: They endorsed a candidate in a primary race...

...First, it grants that depressions (or recessions) check inflation, a proposition of dubious validity based on the see-saw theory (Phillips Curve) that when unemployment is up, inflation is down, and vice versa...

...As far back as the 1840s, Lord Shaftesbury noted the tendency of the disem-ployed factory worker to "go into business" for himself...

...If there is any shift at all, it will be even more emphatically Democratic, for the black experience under Reagan has been harsh— economically and politically...

...In 1980, candidate Reagan carried eight Southern states—one-third of the total number of electoral votes needed for re-election—by a narrow 192,000 votes...

...The big negative is the $190 billion Reagan deficit, the greatest in the nation's history a couple of times over...

...Some who have fallen out of the middle class have ended up in poverty...

...That deficit bothers many economists, just about every editorial writer in America, and the governments of almost every other country in the world...

...These are necessary— even if ultimately wrong—assumptions for any pollster who must reach his results by "sampling": To draw a conclusion about how a multimillion person electorate will vote by sampling 1,500 or 3,000 individuals, the pollster has to weight the findings...

...he has a good act going for him...

...Why we find ourselves in mid-1984, just weeks away from Election Day, with growth and a low rate of inflation is a subject worth exploring—for the understanding to be derived, and to help anticipate the problems that may spring from the new condition...

...While awaiting that sort of refined count, though, it might be illuminating to consider the strengths and weaknesses of the Republican and Democratic candidates...

...Should the black registration increase by a mere 25 per cent before November, these states and others would go Democratic...

...A pivotal point is the American middle class and what has happened to it in the last few years...

...Ronald Reagan's major strength is his style...

...In the White House, Ronald Reagan has been a far greater actor than in any of his Hollywood flicks...

...The reasons are the high unemployment rate of 1981 -82 (which was far above the Carter levels...

...They are numerous, too, and more numerous in 1984 than in 1980...

...By their very nature, they assume that certain patterns of voting behavior will in the future be the same as they have been in the past...

...The phenomenon has hardly been noticed, yet it involves several million Americans who are the 1980's equivalents of the 1930's apple sellers...

...and because they are well-organized...

...In this process it does not matter that the unemployment rate in 1984 is exactly what it was in 1980...

...Of deeper significance, however, are the repeated attitude surveys that reveal women, classically the "nurturing" sex, to be especially sensitive to the plight of the poor, the dangers of war, the needs of mothers and children...

...His plain talk is as good as any fireside chat Franklin D. Roosevelt ever delivered and sometimes better, because he has had more rehearsal time before the microphone...

...A fifth factor is the black vote...

...The decline in the income of most American families, incidentally, is concealed by the per capita figures: The national average has not declined significantly because the income of the minority that has moved up outweighs the income of the majority that has moved down...

...Barring unexpected developments, they are very likely to be back pulling down Democratic levers on Election Day...

...That candidate won...

...and the encouragement to employers to use bankruptcy proceedings to cancel union contracts...

...Does he have a prayer of victory in November, or are we simply about to go through an exercise in democracy...

...Both replies are glib—sloppy impressions based on fears and hopes...

...Reagan is more than a good actor...

...Here we are concerned with the perceptions of the citizens, a host of whom believe that the present course is healthy and that we have to thank the President for it...

...Actually, much of the employment in the service sector is a form of unemployment...

...If you add those who are between the ages of 55-64—some of whom are on Social Security, and most of whom are thinking about what will happen to them when they go on Social Security— then 38 per cent of the electorate consists of maturecitizens...

...Nor is the unhappiness due merely to the Administration's poor record on female appointments...

...He uses short words, familiar examples, one-liner responses, comic strip rhetoric...

...It was not an easy win and, precisely because it was not, the unions had to pump iron, flex muscles, secrete adrenaline...

...because they tend to have a fixed residence, making it unnecessary for them to go through red tape to qualify...

...In fact, no other age group comes out in equal force on Election Day...

...This may explain his playing a provocative game to embarrass both Jackson and Mondale...

...In their statement, Jackson's strategists looked to his candidacy to mobilize black support for the Democratic ticket...

...Yet what may be historically true may not be the case come this November, if the experience during the recently concluded Democratic primaries is any indication...

...While it cannot be assumed that all of his votes would have gone against Reagan, there is solid evidence that the Democratic Party was hurt most by the Anderson candidacy...

...They peddle whatever they can: cameras or candy, batteries or bananas, hot dogs or hot jewelry...

...It feels betrayed by Reagan, who in 1980 gave repeated public assurances that he would not tamper with Social Security and Medicare...

...the answer of the majority would have to be, "Worse...

...They are fond of sniping that anybody can lower the inflation rate by bringing on a depression (as Reagan did in 1981-82), but it takes a wise policymaker to cut back inflation without the pain of a massive slump...

...Seniors go to thepolls...

...In Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, for instance, the Congressional district has a population of 83,140 persons age 65 or over, accounting for 21.3 per cent of the eligible voters...

...But if you remove Anderson from the 1984 equation, three or four points added to the votes of blacks and Hispanics, females, senior citizens, and the declasse middle class could just do it for Mondale...

...Third, it does not tell us why, if there is a way to check inflation without recession, Carter did not do it, especially since Mondale had his ear...

...They got in shape—with mailing lists, phone banks, headquarters, networks, activists...

...because they have time to think about, discuss and act on political matters...

...of 28 hawkers of boiled sheep's feet, 22 belonged to the same class...

...But we leave that for a future piece...

...One-third of that decisive element in America has moved up, but two-thirds have moved down...

...In any case, when we speak about "minorities" we now have to extend the category to men—just as, up to the present, we unthinkingly applied it to women...

...The Democrats argue that the current level of unemployment is hardly better than the 7.5 rate when Reagan first took office...

...But repeated polls reveal that the Federal deficit bothers very few voters: Too many have lived with debt of their own for too long to worry about Uncle Sam's...

...There are three things wrong with this supposed critique...

...Jackson, for instance, would like to be the spokesman...

...He has rightly been dubbed the Great Communicator...

...In addition, Reagan can say—and indeed does say—that he is not only putting Americans back to work but is doing so as the inflation rate continues to drop...

...Some start with a store...

...The modern version of Shaftesbury's hawkers can be seen on the streets of every American city, at roadside stands along highways, in town squares...

...Each of these people is counted as employed and—a greater irony—adds to the number of "small businesses...

...Each is predicated on a fairly homogeneous electorate, failing to take into account the sectional, sexual, racial, ethnic, age, and economic factors at work in the multiple communities (special interests...

...The Administration has tampered in ways that are far more clear to people on Social Security than to the public in general...

...In North Carolina, South Carolina, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Alabama he only managed to muster a plurality, and all five states had very substantial unregistered black populations...

...Finally, there are the unions...

...Exit polls in 1980, and particularly in 1982, showed that women were inclined to be more strongly Democratic and more liberal than men...

...Unfortunately for the Democrats, their explanation of how inflation was reduced helps Reagan rather than hurts him...

...When income is further recalculated to allow for the tax bite—bracket creep and and higher local taxes—the shrinkage in disposable income is even greater than in real wages...

...It may be that all their huffing and puffing will add no more than 3-4 percentage points to the Democratic ticket come November...

...The union factor, however, involves more than strong rank-and-file feeling...

...of nine sellers of sand, eight were factory hands...

...The growth rate for the total economy in the first half of 1984 was 7.7 percent, a brisk pace by anyone's calculations...

...A free-and-easy, folksy, aw-shucks manner invokes the nostalgic image of a one-time wholesome, uncomplicated, neighborly America...

...Hence the much vaunted small business boom...

...Precisely because of this, and of its potential for growth, there are those who want to make it their private property...

...In May 1983 the rate fell to 3.7 per cent—the lowest in a decade and a half...

...by and large, they are earning less...

...Reagan's throaty voice bubbles with the warm gurgle of an overflowing heart adding its empathetic timbre to his lines...

...A fourth factor is the senior citizens' bloc...

...Four years ago it was poor...

...it is an awakened constituency...

...Perhaps Louis Farrakhan, leader of the splinter Nation of Islam minority, would also like to be the spokesman...

...The Reagan recovery is real...

...Consequently, the Democratic margin in labor's ranks was too thin to tip the scales for Carter...

...Thus a poor black's vote in the sample may be weighted as one and an af fluent white's vote may be weighted as 10, because historically the chances of an affluent white going to the polls has been 10 times as great as that of a poor black doing so...

...Nonetheless, should someone ask the entire electorate, as Reagan asked Carter in 1980, "Are you better or worse off than four years ago...

...In sum, the Democratic refutation merely confirms the conservative concept that although the 1981-82 recession was a bitter pill, the medicine, once swallowed, did bring both recovery and less inflation...

...Many of them had a good reason: Carter had certainly not been another Roosevelt or Kennedy or Lyndon Johnson: The jobless rate was high, inflation was high, and basically Carter had continued Richard Nixon's policy of combating inflation with rising interest rates that translated into increasing unemployment...

...One obvious reason for this is that they make up a bigger percentage of the population...

...For the state of Pennsylvania alone, the "mature" make up almost one-third of the population...

...There is no doubt that his primary race brought new black voters to the polls...

...But the black vote is not in anyone's pocket...

...They do so because they are mature...

...To this Reagan counters that Carter left a mess, a situation that was going from bad to worse, and that it took his Administration two years to clean things up and start the country going forward again...

...The election this year may be the first of its kind in our history—with a majority of the men voting for Ronald Reagan, a majority of the women voting for Mondale, and Mondale winning...

...It runs about 90 per cent Democratic and is likely to stay that way...

...It is big and angry...

...During the Reagan years (1980-82) the number of Americans living below the poverty line has risen from 29 million to 34 million, and the percentage of those in poverty has gone from 13 to 15...

...To the person living on a pension with no other income —and there are millions such persons — each change is a tragedy...

...He wrote: "In June 1841, in 11 auction rooms in Manchester, out of the 11 common jobbers, nine were discharged factory hands...

...A third factor in Mondale's favor is the women's vote...

...This paradox is attributable to the movement of many unemployed into entrepreneurship: If you can't find a boss, be your own boss...

...Neither allows for the many contrary influences tugging at the whims of a highly volatile citizenry...

...youth sub-minimum wage...

...to determine what percentage of each is likely to make it to the voting booth...

...Reagan is unlikely to repeat his 1980 performance by getting 40 per cent of the union vote this year...

...The unemployment that hovered around 10 per cent in 1981-82 is now down to 7.4...

...Perhaps as we get closer to Election Day, the prediction practitioners will test different groups (blacks, women, Hispanics, senior citizens, youths, etc...

...Whether Reagan deserves the credit for this decline or whether it is due to other factors is a proper subject of debate for economists...

...the return to work that has put auto workers in the clean-up crews at McDonald' s; the proposed...

...The retort is: Remember the way Harry Truman upset Thomas E. Dewey in 1948...

...Nonetheless, it seems a fair assumption that among American blacks raised in a Judeo-Christian, Roosevelt-Kennedy tradition—who for generations called upon "Pharaoh to let my people go," and who in recent decades called upon FDR and JFK to be modern Moseses—the vote this fall will be large and overwhelmingly Democratic...

...Given the many influences at work in the black community, the ultimate size of its turnout is admittedly unpredictable...

...More important, though, is the shift from manufacturing to service jobs, for the service sector pays less...

...These (and other) mayors are all Democrats...

...to Joe and Jane Citizen, whose reasoning is generally post hoc ergo propter hoc, he is the man who made it happen...

...In 1980, Reagan enjoyed a tissue-thin popular majority of 51 per cent...

...In part, this decline in disposable income reflects the failure of wages and salaries to keep up with inflation and tax deductions...

...Several books and dozens of shorter pieces have been written of late that suggest a trend toward the Latinization of the United States: a disappearance of the middle class and a polarization of the population, with a few more millionaires and many more in poverty...

...His idiom fits his ideology: a return to an earlier America that never was...

...The consensus is that if males were disfranchised in 1984, as women once were, Reagan could not win...

...Second, it grants that Reagan was indeed responsible for checking inflation...

...that make up America...

...But it is doubtful that these traits would be effective if the jobless rate were 12 per cent instead of 7, or if the inflation rate were 14 per cent instead of 4. In such adverse times the President's oratory would be heard as oily, his sincere face would be seen as phoney...

...A similar pattern prevails in other key states...

...Of 37 hawkers of nuts and oranges, 32 were factory hands...

...His being untouched by the evil around him is less due to any applied Teflon coating than to an innate Bunyanesque innocence...

...The meaning may be empty, but the mood is there...

...In absolute numbers, there will be more women casting ballots in 1984 than men...

...Such "sex" issues are, to be sure, important...

...When both lyrics and music are absent, there is the twinkle of the eye, the knitting of a brow, the jutting of a jaw, the contagious smile to invite intimacy, to express concern, to inspire confidence, to give that good feeling...

...Polls, it should be added, have only limited value in forecasting the outcome of the 1984 White House competition...

...The public may not be sensitive to the postponement of a cost-of-living adjustment, or to changes in medical co-payment, taxation of pensions and other unnoticed minutiae...

...That makes Reagan a doctor with good prescriptions as well as a good bedside manner...

...Female opposition to Reagan (and the Republican Party) is not rooted exclusively in the GOP' s opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment—a historic reversal of its traditional position...

...But to the former auto worker, who besides making $30,000 a year received health care coverage, a pension, paid holidays, and vacations for his 40 hours of work a week, life as a peddler earning a piddling, perilous income is a real comedown and, economically, a distress...

...The polls will then be more accurate...

...How, in the light of these circumstances, can Mondale win...

...In 1980, about 40 per cent of their members voted for Reagan against Carter...

...the conversion of a national labor board into an anti-labor board...

...In New York State barely half the blacks who are eligible are registered to vote...

...The critical factor is that those who are employed are not earning what they used to earn...

...A second factor bound to benefit the Democratic standard bearer next November is the absence of a John Anderson...