Beyond the Reagan Landslide

...Take a closer look, however: A shift of one vote in 10 turns a party's landslide into a defeat—and a shift of one vote in five brings about the o^er party's landslide...

...The Working Man's Party of 1828-30 was an uprising of laborers...

...George Bush unsubtly capitalized on this perception by boasting that the Republicans were "not the party of the weak and wanting," a claim that reached out to the 85 per cent of the people who are not in poverty, the 90 per cent who are employed, and the 95 per cent who have homes of one sort or another...

...Consequently, Democratic dependence on the states of the Old Confederacy has been greatly reduced...

...Roosevelt lost 70 House seats in 1938, Eisenhower 50 in 1958, Johnson 47 in 1966, and Ford 48 in 1974...

...Incidentally, taking into account the drop in inflation, interest is higher than ever...

...The Democrats hold a handsome majority in the House, larger than they had after Reagan first came to power...

...In 1982, they elected as many of its members as they did in 1940—though in 1940,101 out of 103 Southern representatives were Democrats, and by 1982 that could be said of merely 80 out of 108...

...the minority, even if it is an increasingly impressive one, is shut out completely...

...To the voters, this meant that although we were forced to take a bitter pill to cure the illness, we were lucky to have had a resolute and effective doctor...

...In part this is attributable to John Rawls' theory of "justice as fairness" to the poorest in our midst...

...Not so...

...Among Democrats in recent years the whole concept has been equated with "fairness...

...It embraced FDR not because of the future he promised but because it was still fighting the Civil War and protesting Reconstruction...

...The notion is economically unsound and politically suicidal, for you cannot promote the general welfare or the fortunes of the Democratic Party by dumping more and more Americans on the dole...

...This was the rationale for a program to rebuild America, to put people back to work...

...The historic cuts of 1981 could never have passed if not for Democratic support, yet the giveback schedule was depicted as a purely Presidential gift...

...The pendulum subsequently swung again, giving John F. Kennedy a narrow win in 1960 and Lyndon B. Johnson a 23-point knockout in '64...

...Are there no massive movements, no continental drifts of political opinion...

...They may feel underpaid, underrated, under represented, and under appreciated, but mostly they do not think of themselves as an underclass...

...it was meant to give the men and women in our farms and factories control over their lives and conditions of work...

...The South's slipping and sliding toward the Republican national ticket over the past three and a half decades has obscured the growth of its liberal element...

...In the half century from 1934 to 1984, the Democrats—and most liberal pundits—have lost sight of the original meaning of "the Welfare State...

...The political balance and economic conditions are bound to start changing within the next two years...

...Responding positively to these positive developments, the people endorsed the status quo, re-electing almost everyone, Republican and Democrat alike...

...In neither event was it the essence of the "Welfare State" as originally understood...

...Early in this series, I said that Reagan was not only a good actor but a President with a good act going for him—a pleasing story of lower inflation, lower unemployment, lower taxes, and lower interest rates...

...In general, Americans resist the idea that elections are an eleemosynary exercise: We do not and should not lack compassion, but personal survival comes first...

...Unfortunately, to a majority of voters that translates simply as "we" must be fair to " them...

...The Democrats' heavy emphasis in 1984 on aiding the very poor, the j ob-less and the homeless left voters feeling that the one-time party of America's yeomen had become the voice of the desperate...

...Amid these historic tremors and earthquakes, 80-90 per cent of the landscape remains glacially stable...

...That would itself have been a clear-cut victory, and the actual outcome was still more lopsided...

...Otherwise, they might very well have greatness thrust upon them, only to fail for want of the political grandeur the moment demands...

...And Franklin D. Roosevelt's Second Bill of Rights was not a call to charity...

...Understandably these groups responded to their present condition...

...It was hypothalamus vs...

...In Oklahoma, Reagan prevailed by 38 points, Democratic Senator David Boren by 53...

...In the Senate, the Republicans lost three seats and picked up one, for a net loss of two...

...Although the South returned to the Democratic fold in 1960and'64—largely out of its perception of LB J as a local boy at heart—it treated Nixon and Barry Goldwater fairly well...

...The 1984 results followed this pattern...

...Harding, Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover won by 26,25 and 17 percentage points, respectively...

...They reflected the Solid South's positions...

...Countdown *84 BEYOND THE REAGAN LANDSLIDE BY GUS TYLER Ronald Reagan's landslide has been widely attributed to his skill at projecting a persuasive personality: The old trouper knows how to win the plaudits of the audience...

...Dixie put Roosevelt in the White House and sent Democratic reactionaries to Congress, where they fought him at every turn...

...Georgia gave Reagan a 20-point edge, and returned Democratic Senator Sam Nunn by 60...

...He deserved absolutely no kudos for the cola increase to retirees, and little if any for the declining interest levels...

...In Roosevelt's time, Dixie's Capitol Hill delegation included two or three of them...

...Noble as it may be to call on the electorate to forget self-interest and make sacrifices for the needy, that approach is not likely to be persuasive, especially among those who cannot afford to indulge such highly ethical attitudes...

...Once more pundits foretold the end of the GOP...

...The Reagan walkover most closely resembles Richard M. Nixon's 1972 victory: Both men carried 49 states and lost the District of Columbia...

...The Democratic standard-bearer, Walter Mondale, of course also spent much time pointing out the perils ahead, domestically and on the international front...

...their crushing re-elections brought in fewer Republican representatives than their initial narrower victories...

...What all this suggests for the years ahead is that the White House will remain Republican and the Congress Democratic—provided everything remains equal...

...The "sixth-year phenomenon" (a term we have just invented) appears when a re-elected President's party confronts a second midterm contest under his aegis, and it produces heavy setbacks...

...As the incumbent, Reagan gets credit for what is happening, whether or not he is responsible...

...Nonetheless, it was exceptionally high compared with the overall vote of blue- and white-collar workers, who went for Reagan in the same proportions as the whole country: 59 to 41 per cent...

...This brief history may suggest that the electorate is highly volatile...

...So on Election Day, the balloting went 3:2 for Reagan (59 to 41 per cent...

...In 1952, Eisenhower captured 57 of the South's electoral votes against Adlai Stevenson's 7 1; in 1956, their respective totals were 67 and 61...

...Since 1930, the GOP has had a majority in the House during a mere four years: 1947-48 (the first postwar election) and 1953-54 (the first Eisenhower election...

...In 1968, Hubert H. Humphrey secured only Texas' 25 electoral votes while elsewhere below the Mason-Dixon line the count was Nixon 57, George Wallace 46...

...Moreover, his party is exposed in the Senate races, 22 of its seats being at risk compared with the Democrats' 12...

...Introduced by New Dealers eager to find a constitutional justification for Federal intervention in the economy, the phrase seized upon the Preamble's insistence that our government was ordained "to promote the general welfare...

...The exception to the rule was the Jews (2:1 on Monday's side...

...Yet Franklin D. Roosevelt was the winner in 1932, and in '36 he gave Alf Landon a 24-point drubbing...

...For as the South has become more Republican, it has simultaneously become more liberal...

...Somehow, the term came to be seen as meaning an ever larger part of U.S...

...Like its precursors, the latest landslide proves that American voters know how to split tickets...

...Incidentally, the same thing happened to Eisenhower and to Nixon...

...Of the top third, some 90 per cent go to the polls...

...Their present 53-47 majority may well be too small to prevent the chamber from passing to their rivals in 1987...

...The various socialist groups spawned here were premised on class struggle, the inevitable and instinctive impulse of workers to fight on their own behalf...

...Like it or not, his indecent appeal effectively exploited the Democrats' inability to make contact with the great mass of our fellow-citizens...

...The pattern persisted in the case of the tax issue...

...he benefited from its history...

...The liberal trend is camouflaged in addition by the growing number of Republicans the South has been sending to Congress...

...To employed and reasonably well-satisfied voters, Mondale's message seemed to be, "I will hike your taxes to take care of those poor...

...All of the warnings had scant impact...

...The second great change in the country's political life confirms the prevalence of our dual national personality...

...Now that the region's right-wingers have accepted the two-party system, it has become respectable for them to look to conservative Republicans instead of conservative Democrats...

...of the bottom two thirds, only about 40 per cent do...

...After four terms of FDR and another one of Harry Truman, it appeared the Republicans would never recover...

...Had all voters asked themselves the question Ronald Reagan put to them in 1980—"Are you better off now than you were four years ago...

...In the days of the New Deal, the South could be depended upon to vote the straight Democratic ticket...

...Actually, his rhetoric was reminiscent of Benjamin Disraeli's "Tory Democracy"—the basic attitude propelling it was noblesse oblige, not egalitarianism...

...Measured by the popular vote, Reagan' s 18-point triumph is not historic at all...

...What happens in 1988, and—no less important—beyond it, will not depend on these considerations alone, however...

...The Declaration of Independence accuses George III of "cutting off our trade with all parts of the world" and of injuring us in numerous other ways...

...A drop of 48 seats for the GOP in Reagan's sixth year would merely be conforming to the norm...

...Reagan's landslide was historic, in the sense of getting more electoral votes than any President ever, not excluding George Washington...

...The "general welfare" was the welfare of the population in general...

...Not surprisingly, therefore, some observers have concluded that the Administration's "historic landslide" gives it a policy mandate, and that we will have Republican rule until the end of the century...

...Whatever may explain the American electorate's schizoid behavior, it is clear that the Democrats remain dominant in Congress...

...While Economic Man watched the show and cheered the President as scriptwriter, producer, director, and star, he went still further, doing what Dostoev-sky's Grand Inquisitor told Christ he should have done to win the loyalty of the multitudes: Give them bread, if you can...

...This is a logical move in view of the general GOP ideology, yet the forces of reaction are no stronger as a result...

...Upholding a liberal tradition revived by recollections of what happens when churches take over the state, Jews voted their past: Falwell was scarier than Farrakhan...

...Republican ads reduced Mondale's message to two words, "raise taxes," and he and the rest of the Democratic ticket lost millions of votes...

...But that is solely because the Electoral College is larger today than it was in 1788 when the "father of our nation" was chosen unanimously, or in 1820 when James Monroe got all but one of the ballots...

...They would merely prescribe smaller dosages out of compassion for the patient...

...Besides, the Democrats had nothing of their own to offer, because, like the Republicans, they believe that Dr...

...The total turnout would have been 56 per cent of the electorate, split roughly 53 to 47 per cent in Reagan's favor...

...In New York's Nassau and Suffolk counties a quarter of a million Reagan voters pulled the lever for the other side on the congressional level...

...other commentators did the same elsewhere from liberal and conservative perspectives...

...The cracks began to show in 1948, the year the Democratic Party took a firm stand for civil rights and Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina lined up behind the Dixiecrat candidate, Strom Thurmond...

...A passel of black mayors and state legislators, as well as progressive governors and congressmen, testify to the slow, steady trend within a trend...

...Reagan grabbed people emotionally, appealing to flag, faith and family—the eternal expressions of Darwin's "social instinct...

...Not since Reconstruction had the GOP won a majority in the Southland...

...He was a Su-merian priest leading us in chants to a tribal deity...

...The dangers lurking behind the seeming pleasantries were discussed by me in these pages...

...Most of the South came down on Democrat Jimmy Carter's side in 1976, perhaps expecting the Georgia peanut farmer to act like a redneck...

...He did not, and in 1980 he lost every state in his native region except his own...

...No matter: He took home the marbles anyway...

...During the President' s first term, one third of the nation moved up, and two thirds did not...

...poor Mondale was the good son of a Universalist minister reciting the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount...

...Under our system of Presidential politics, after all, the majority in a state gets the electoral votes...

...Reagan's 22-point spread in Montana did not discomfit Democratic Senator Max Baucus, who overcame his opponent by 16 points...

...The earlier of them produced the continuing Democratic predominance in the House of Representatives...

...otherwise, capture their hearts through appeals to the collective subconscious...

...In New Jersey, where Reagan blitzed Mondale by 20 points, Senator Bill Bradley, a Democrat with a 90-per cent liberal voting record, scored a 30-point win...

...The Democrats must evolve a process that will insure their finding an effective standard-bearer and composing a truly meaningful program...

...Since 1920, there have been eight landslides...

...The "midterm" rule is that the party in possession of the White House always loses ground in Congress (mainly the House) in non-Presidential years...

...Then Dwight D. Eisenhower brought them back from the dead in 1952, and in ' 56 his margin was 15 points, a bit short of Reagan's...

...At the minimum, the GOP will fall victim to the oft-cited "midterm slump," and this is virtually certain to be accompanied by the rarely noticed "sixth-year phenomenon...

...today they make up more than a third...

...and had all of them known the answer and voted accordingly, the 1984 result would not have changed radically...

...In fact, we have experienced two such transformations...

...The union effort did make a big difference, to unionists...

...Phillips' depressant is the only remedy for inflation...

...Similarly, instead of unmasking what I have called "Reagan's Counterfeit Keynesianism" (NL, July 9-23), with its failure to redistribute income and thereby stimulate prolonged growth, they assailed Keynesianism itself...

...essentially, he wanted to undo the inequities of the 1981 tax bill...

...Conservative critics have charged that Mondale's campaign was based on class-warfare attitudes reminiscent of Marxism...

...Instead of reminding the nation that this Republican had used the deficit, a restorative patented by liberals, to create jobs, they assailed deficit spending...

...Voters live in the present, not in the future, and react viscerally to the pains and pleasures of the moment...

...The Democrats seemed to be buried forever...

...Alas, few heed the voice of the small type in the hour of screaming headlines...

...True, reading the fine print you discovered that he was not going to raise everyone's liabilities...

...They could be a prelude to a Democratic landslide...

...society will be living permanently on public assistance...

...When FDR spoke of the "forgotten man," the public felt he was talking about it, not "them...

...Compounding this ineptness, Mondale boldly announced that he was determined to raise taxes...

...Quite ironically, the Democrats played into the President's hands...

...For most this aid—what is currently called "welfare" —would be transient...

...They made Reagan look good on unemployment, too...

...Anyone who remembered the recent past must have been bewildered...

...He managed to sustain both right down to November 6. Even the fearful senior citizens were pleased a few days before the election by Reagan's announcement of a 3.5 per cent cost-of-living adjustment (cola) in their Social Security benefits...

...The only questions are how soon and how severe it will be...

...To be sure, the New Deal had an additional dimension: to help out those who were temporarily having a hard time making it, and those who because of physical or mental disabilities might never be able to make it...

...But history suggests that is most unlikely...

...The small GOP gain over the midterm totals—14 seats —is less significant than might be thought: four of its winners replaced equally conservative boll-weevil Democrats...

...Backing Mondale were the constituencies of the poor and the neglected: blacks (9:1), the unemployed (about 7:3), His-panics (2:1), as well as families earning under$12,500 annually and union house-holds (both 53 to 46 per cent...

...The rate of price increases is down, they said, because he ran the country through a wringer in 1981 and 1982...

...Indeed, our progressive movements have been built on appeals to self-interest, not rejections of it...

...It was a sure loser...

...for a few it would be permanent...

...Nixon swept everything in 1972...

...There was more to his near-record vote than applause, however, despite its failure to benefit his party in Congress...

...Meanwhile, the Republicans will have to take the discredit for the troubles of the economy...

...And Reagan carried Rhode Island, while liberal Democratic Senator Claiborne Pell garnered three quarters of the state's vote...

...During the last four decades, the losses in Dixie have been made up in urban and suburban areas, and in California...

...The Republicans regained the White House in 1968, and held on to it with a 22-point edge in 1972, only to be tossed out in 1976...

...Organized labor's support for Mondale was relatively low, much lower than needed to carry a Democratic candidate...

...the second was the breakup of the Solid South to the advantage of the Republican Party, particularly its Presidential candidates...

...The record for the Senate, starting with 1932, is identical up to 1980, when the GOP achieved a majority there that it has sustained...

...It is an appeal to pity, rather than self-preservation...

...At this moment, they are sufficiently comfortable to ignore today's pinpricks, let alone tomorrow's problems...

...The Populists were " of the people" as well as "for the people...

...In 1920, '24 and '28, Republicans WarrenG...

...cerebrum—an eternally unfair contest...

...Bad times and bad timing could traumatize the GOP in 1986...

...If nothing else, you might suppose that the expanded number of Southern Republicans in the House threatens the Democrats' grip on the chamber...

...Practically all forecasters agree that a slump will hit the country before November 1986...

...Nevertheless, it was more conservative then than now...