Straws in the American Political Winds

...In 1938, with FDR riding high in the White House, the Democrats lost 70 seats...

...A generation raised in relative affluence and security turned from the "public interest" to the "private interest...

...Between late summer and early fall, though, Bush's approval rating slipped about 20 points...

...Thesole departure from this pattern, besides 1934, was the Presidential year of 1976, when voters were spanking the GOP for Watergate, but even with Jimmy Carter's coattails they merely added one seat...

...Apathy" and "anger" appear to be opposites, yet they are actually children of the same parent—frustration...

...Collectively, they were gaining 14 seats in the House of Representatives...

...women voted 54 per cent Democratic and 46 per cent Republican...

...In New England, the people he went to endorse preferred to dissociate themselves from their President and party leader...

...Yet Rollins was right, for the 1990 election was different in two respects...

...Be that as it may, to counter Democratic redistricting designs the Republicans have been working on a twopronged approach: one political, the other legal...

...If one party captured all three, it could do much to "stack" Congress from now to the year 2000...

...The Democratic winner of the gubernatorial race in Florida, Lawton Chiles, campaigned as a populist, declaringthat what was wrong with American politics was the ruinous role of big money...

...What ended the drift toward chaos and violent confrontation was the New Deal...

...Ironically, that may have made the radical professor more palatable to the Minnesota electorate and provided him with his margin of victory...

...Where a party controlled the Legislature and the Governor's office, it could carve out districts in its own image...

...Of those interviewed, 58 per cent said Yes, and 33 per cent said No...

...The U. S. Supreme Court—in an effort to prevent moves in Southern states to exclude a black legislative presence by setting up districts that hopelessly scatter the black vote, or by composing huge white-dominated districts that elect multiple representatives—has ruled that under the Voting Rights Act, as amended in 1982, minorities must be guaranteed fair representation...

...Despite the dismal voter turnout and dreary campaigns, the results suggest straws in the political winds that could affect not only what happens in the 102nd Congress (1991 -92) but throughout the decade to the year 2000...

...Nevertheless, he collected a whopping $7.5 million against his opponent's $10 million...

...In a verbally vicious gubernatorial race, Richards outpointed an opponent who found it difficult to fight back with both feet in his mouth...

...The Governor of Virginia, chosen in 1989, is Douglas Wilder, a black right-tochoose Democrat...

...The Republican Party would draw a circle around the black [or Hispanic] community and divide the rest of the city into triangles to create lily-white districts in which they think they can elect their candidates," notes Representative Craig Washington of Texas, the point man on districting for the 24-member Congressional Black Caucus...

...Yet the defeat of 15 Republican incumbents, compared with six for the Democrats, is viewed as a dramatic indicator by the strategists of both parties...

...Ann Richards, the Texas victor, first appeared on the national scene at the 1988 Democratic nominating convention, when she characterized Bush as having been born with "a silver foot in his mouth...

...Seventythree per cent of blacks and 69 per cent of Hispanics voted Democratic, while the white population split its vote evenly between the two parties...

...And he strengthened in other ways as well the voters' perception of the GOP as the party of the rich...

...In Florida and Texas, Democrats displaced Republican governors to win complete say over the districting process...

...A CBS News/New York Times poll taken in August asked, "Who has benefited most from the politics of the Federalgovernment...

...The black Democratic candidate for the Senate from North Carolina this year, Harvey Gantt, although defeated, received 47 per cent of the final vote and 37 per cent of the white vote (40 per cent of the latter would have meant victory...

...And given that the last avowed Socialist to be elected to Congress was Victor Berger in 1926, the Sanders victory may also be read as a straw in the wind, however thin and lonely it may be...

...That's the good news...

...Failing to cut a deal, the Republicans are prepared to pursue their goal by challenging new formations in the courts...

...It continues to be conservative on both economic and social questions and expresses its view effectively in state, Congressional and Presidential elections...

...Thereason for the odd phenomenon is that many backers of the party in the White House do not turn out in the off year because they feel "their" President will take care of things, while supporters of the out party do march to the polls to express their discontent...

...Against this background, a Democratic gainofnineseats looks like nothing...

...Then he threatened to veto any bill that would put a surtax of a mere 7.5 per cent on families with incomes of more than a million dollars...

...When, in the August poll, the question was asked as to whether "the rich people benefit at the expense of the average citizen," 57 per cent said Yes, and only 9 per cent said No...

...While the Chiles and Richards triumphs suggest a liberal trend in the South, it must be remembered that neither Texas nor Florida is typically Southern...

...others want to say No to everything...

...Of the 18 states where Democrats have unchallenged control, 13 are either Southern or border states (Tennessee, Kentucky, West Virginia) whose political performance is deceptive...

...The Republicans did of course suffer a defeat in Minnesota, where the moderately conservative and Jewish Rudy Boschwitz lost to Paul Wellstone, a Jewish Carlton College professor some tagged an immoderate radical...

...If Wellstone lives up to his campus reputation, he will be the "Socialist" in the Senate, probably an inch or two to the left of Sanders in the House...

...The political thrust calls for striking deals with black and Hispanic leaders to carve out districts that would be safe for minority candidates—in effect, electoral ghettos...

...Sixty-one per cent responded Republican and20 per cent answered Democratic...

...In some cities the number of black and Hispanic Representatives might increase by one or two, but the total number of Democratic seats would fall by four or five...

...Classified by religious affiliation, only 43 per cent of white Protestants voted Democratic, whereas 57 per cent of white Catholics and 74 per cent of Jews voted Democratic...

...The GOP apple will undoubtedly be tempting to minority politicians more interested in personal power than in progressive programs, including civil rights...

...But straws in the Southern political winds indicate a changing climate...

...But, as recession becomes a reality, the have-nots and the have-littles begin to wonder why all the money ends up at the top...

...To dramatize his point, he refused to accept any contribution of more than $100...

...That is why Rollins risked saying the loss of a single Senate race would be a bad omen for his party...

...This has been read by the GOP to mean that there must be districts so heavily weighted that only a member of a minority can be elected...

...Whenhe vetoed the Civil Rights Bill, his liberal wing was outraged...

...In the Presidential contests of the 1980s, every Southern state went Republican with the lone exception of Georgia for Jimmy Carter in 1980...

...The November election results confirm the view of the Arthur Schlesingers —both father and son—that the political pendulum is always swinging...

...George Bush's veto of the Civil Rights Bill was sustained by one vote in the Senate...

...The figures for the "old people" similarly record a Democratic predilection this year...

...Trying to explain the GOP reverses as they showed up on the TV screen, Robert Novak opined on CNN that "the old people's vote and the women are murdering the Republican Party...

...Between October 15 and Election Day, Bush traveled to 16 states and gave his public support to 22 candidates, of whom seven won and 15 lost...

...The object is to remove the minority swing vote where it has traditionally provided the margin of victory for Democrats...

...The most galling defeat was the gubernatorial contest in Texas, Bush's "home" state...

...Thisdoes not necessarily mean a liberal majority in the Houseof Representatives...

...For it would be in the state capitals, not on Capitol Hill, that the new Congressional district unes would be drawn in 1991 based on the 1990 census...

...In the Houseraces, men voted 50 per cent Democratic and 50 per cent Republican...

...In every contest since 1912, whenever they have controlled roughly 60 per cent or more of the House, they have invariably lost ground...

...In the Senate 35 seats were exposed this year...

...Actually, the true number will be 10 if Socialist Bernie Sanders of Vermont votes with the Democrats, as is likely...

...He dug in as long as he could to get a tax cut for capital gains...

...The straws can be observed in the races for the House, the Senate and—most important—the governorships and state legislatures...

...But in the opening fray Democratic battalions will outnumber those of the Republicans by six to one...

...In both parties, the sophisticated consultants flooded campaign headquarters with internal memoranda advising concentration on local races...

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

...In fact, an examination of the Democrats the South tends to pick reveals that it is totally consistent...

...In the 1930s, the Great Depression spawned a Father Coughlin, a Gerald L.K...

...The traditional antidote to the negative in politics has been, as might be expected, the positive—acts giving people a sense that they are being heard and that social and economic justice can and will prevail...

...other vetoes were sustained by a half dozen or so votes in the House...

...Superficially, the bifurcation appears to be an inanity bordering on political insanity...

...The one exception to that recurrent behavior came in 1934, after Roosevelt's initial victory, when the Democrats tacked on nine seats thanks to the still pulsating anger of the voters over Herbert Hoover's Depression...

...Seventy-two per cent said, "The rich...

...In the House the Democrats picked upnineseats...

...Perhaps the most telling question was, "Should the government do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the average citizen in this country...

...But that'shardlythe whole story...

...His bumbling the budget, with a "hem" one day and a "haw" the next, made him look like the wimp he has tried so hard not to appear to be...

...The straws in the political winds of 1990 seem to suggest that 1992 may well be an updated replay of 1932, especially if the nation falls into a more serious economic slump between now and the next Presidential election...

...The GOP was hoping to chop down the Democratic 55 to 45 advantage...

...Other communities in the nation were "murdering" the GOP, too...

...In recent years, big House swings have been few because gerrymandering has assured a very high percentage of "safe" incumbents...

...Indeed, before November 7 Ed Rollins, co-chair of the National Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, described by NBC's John Chancellor as "one of the smartest politicians in the country," allowed that a loss of eight to 10 House seats, and any setback at all in the Senate, would be a disaster for the GOP In the past, the out party picked up an average of about 34 lower chamber seats at midterm—based on the figures from 1912 (the year the House of Representatives was frozen at 43 5 members) to 1986...

...Most folks are ready to say, "I don't care how much you're making, so long as I'm making a living...

...Now, in a time of adversity and insecurity, the people are turning to the "public interest" once more...

...After the ballots were counted on November 7, the Democrats came away with control of the legislative and executive branches in 18 states, the Republicans in three...

...Above that point Republicans were favored, and the percentage increased as incomes rose...

...Thebadnews, widely reported, is a growing apathy and anger on the part of the people...

...Still, that alone would not bother too many—if they were making ends meet...

...An analysis of the returns bears out Novak's contention...

...This may appear insignificant, especially since the "out" party (the one that does not control the Oval Office) traditionally registers gains in "off year" balloting...

...Still another group favoring Democrats consisted of individuals with annual incomes below $50,000...

...But whatever happens in the months ahead as a consequence of the Congressional elections will almost certainly be dwarfed by developments at the state level as a result of the new lineup of legislatures and— especially—governorships...

...his leadership of the world in laying down the law to Saddam Hussein made him the hero of the hour...

...Thus the Democrats in Washington may be in a position to override Presidential wishes...

...Moreover, action on the Left in Dixie stirs reaction on the Right—as we saw again in the David Duke bid for the Senate in Louisiana...

...Some just walk away...

...In a sense, then, the redistricting battle, far from having ended on Election Day, has just begun...

...The thinking seemed sound: His approval rating hovered around 70 per cent...

...Looking at the nation as a whole, that protean political creature called the gerrymander will resemble a donkey far more than an elephant in 1991...

...When he said he would accept new taxes, his right wing was enraged...

...In California, the Republicans held on to the governorship but will have to cope with a Democratic legislature...

...A follow-up question asked, "Which party favors the rich...

...In Dixie, for example, local governments and Congressional delegations remain predominantly Democratic, yet since 1948 the votes for President have been shifting from solid Democratic to solid Republican...

...Among first-time voters, 56 per cent pulled the lever for Democratic Representatives, compared with 49 per cent in 1986...

...It offered a sane and civilized way for a democracy to survive and succeed...

...So their garnering nine more seats represents a severe setback for the Republican Party...

...Of the435 seats, only about 40 are now really on the line...

...Its reasoning was simple: More Republicans were running in safe states than Democrats...

...In the last days of the campaign the Boschwitz camp charged that Wellstone was not involved with the Jewish community and was not raising his children as good Jews...

...The 102nd Congress could be virtually "veto-proof...

...More significantly, the Democrats already had 258 seats going in, leaving little room for expansion...

...The big targets were California, Texas and Florida...

...Smith, brown-shirted storm troopers, and a scary assortment of demagogues playing demigods...

...Those feelings, registered in the summer, no doubt were reinforced by Bush's posture during the active campaign months...

...Early m the campaign, Republican strategists counted on using the President's personal popularity to put over the party's gubernatorial and senatorial candidates around the country...