A Movement In Search of a Party
SHIELDS, CURRIN V.
A Movement In Search of a Party by CURRIN V. SHIELDS HPhis year the Democratic Party stands midway between the defeat it suffered in 1956 and the battle it must fight two years from now. Is the...
...What these ready explanations ignore is the nature of the Democratic Party itself...
...For establishing more and better recreational facilities for sports-minded Americans...
...A few hard-bitten politicos who learned their trade back in the Depression claim that the Democrats can win only when people are hungry...
...While the Administration has alienated our old friends and antagonized our potential friends, and has allowed the Soviet Union to expand its influence—moral as well as political and military—throughout the world, the Democrats have reacted to the amazing succession of failures with little more than nagging, carping complaint...
...This backward-looking approach ignores present-day needs...
...For example, in our post-war economy there are many unresolved problems, some of which dangerously threaten the nation's economic health...
...They talked in concrete terms about such matters as public power, farm supports, aid to education, and civil rights...
...If the 1956 returns mean anything, the South is no longer either solid or Democratic...
...In fact the Southern Democrats now dominate the Party to an extent far out of proportion either to their electoral importance or their influence on the Party's fortunes...
...With a Party offering an imaginative program for meeting the critical problems confronting the American people, a Party democratically structured and responsibly led, the Democrats could enter the 1960 contest relying on their strength rather than on the opposition's weakness...
...The bond which holds them together is ideological: shared attitudes about how the political issues of the day should be settled...
...Plain citizens, men and women who even a generation ago could not have afforded the luxury of spending time on public affairs, are now playing ever-expanding roles in American politics...
...To the extent that they can play a responsible role in conducting the organization's affairs, they voluntarily contribute their energy and talent...
...For ending the tragedies of floods and forest fires...
...The private citizens who run it cannot be bought, bulldozed, or blackmailed...
...The abundance of American life has created a new leisure class, a class which embraces most American families...
...Stevenson's popular vote fell off five per cent in Illinois and New York...
...The programs offered by the candidates, including the Presidential slate, lacked vision in coping with the critical problems of our time...
...F.D.R...
...The practice is long standing in American politics for candidates to take the lead in delineating the main lines of party programs...
...At the same time, Democratic losses were heaviest in the older industrial states with large metropolitan population centers, traditional strongholds of the party machines...
...The record suggests that it is unrealistic to explain a political loss solely in terms of the opposition's strength...
...There may be some truth in each of these explanations...
...when they have lost, they carried the South...
...But to the extent that the members believe in the purpose of the organization, they voluntarily support it with their time and money...
...Is the Democratic Party preparing for victory in the 1960 Presidential race, or for its third disastrous defeat in a decade...
...The Eisenhower-Nixon ticket polled almost 10 million more votes than the Democratic slate—a victory comparable in popular votes only to Franklin D. Roosevelt's landslide triumph over Alf Landon in 1936...
...The 1956 election returns showed a significant trend in American voting patterns: the Democratic Party's losses were heaviest in the traditional Democratic strongholds, and the Party's gains were greatest among voters who more often than not have voted Republican...
...For providing adequate treatment for the increasing number of mentally ill...
...in New Jersey, eight per cent...
...As a consequence, conservative Southerners and machine politicians from populous metropolitan centers have occupied high places in Party councils...
...It is on this citizens' movement among Democrats, rather than on the Southern Democrats and party bosses, that the prospect for Democratic victory in a national election now depends...
...The Democrats have had some able spokesmen in Adlai Stevenson, Estes Kefauver, Paul Douglas, Hubert Humphrey, and others...
...The popular and electoral votes in the Southern states are a minor portion of the national total...
...In recent years the Democratic Party has suffered from a poverty of what Harry Truman once called "tall leadership...
...by business and professional people who can now afford to spend some of their time in pursuits other than pecuniary...
...Because of the seniority rule, most chairmanships went to Southerners who represent "safe" Democratic constituencies—in most cases men who have displayed something less than enthusiastic support for the Party program that Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver talked about during the 1956 campaign...
...But instead of fashioning bold new programs to increase consumer purchasing power and promote fuller employment, the Democrats have been content to tinker away at minor improvements in accepted policies...
...In 1956 the Democratic Party suffered its worst defeat at the polls in a generation...
...The nation we know today is much different from the one our parents knew in the decade before the Great Depression...
...You can't win, so the lament runs, when an opulent opposition dominates the press and other mass communication media...
...For combating the expanding problems of juvenile delinquency...
...While >the Republican Party has undergone a major transformation in recent years, the Democratic Party has failed to adjust to the novel political scene of the present...
...But these states the Democrats cannot win by depending on the machine politicians, anymore than they can win in the South by depending on Dixiecrats for support...
...People vote their pocket-books, and the American people are still living too high on the hog to vote Democratic...
...For these and many other problems, the Democratic Party, as a national movement, has no program at all, let alone a challenging one with broad popular appeal...
...the opportunity to withdraw and move on to other frontiers of community experience is always present...
...This movement is in search of a new Democratic Party— a Party with a new type of leadership and organization, and most imperatively, a Party with a new type of program...
...That year Harry S. Truman lost Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, and South Carolina to the States' Rights candidate, but still won— even though New York and Pennsylvania went Republican...
...Why the bosses can no longer deliver votes is clear: the historic bases of machine politics—immigrants and patronage—are gradually disappearing from American life...
...Add nine other states outside the South—California, Michigan, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Indiana, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, and Connecticut—and there are enough electoral votes for victory in a national election...
...And Democrats have defeated Republicans when times were good, just as they CURRIN SHIELDS, political scientist at the University of California in Los Angeles, has long been active in Democratic Party activities in California...
...But these results are not indicative of the Party's fortunes as a national political movement...
...In short, in recent years the Democratic leadership has been something less than "tall...
...But since 1932 many remarkable changes in the nature of American political life have occurred...
...Politics for them is a means, not an end in itself...
...Cook County in Illinois (Chicago area) was carried by a Republican Presidential candidate for the first time in a generation...
...An affirmative answer would be difficult to justify...
...For improving the quality of instruction in our schools and colleges...
...The White House is the first prize in American politics...
...But without a Democrat in the White House, control of the Party has gravitated to the Democratic leadership in Congress, represented by Sam Rayburn in the House and Lyndon Johnson in the Senate, both Texans...
...Furthermore, the domination of politics by paid professionals is being determinedly challenged by a new type of politician with a new type of political organization...
...Those four states alone have nearly half the 266 electoral votes required to win a Presidential race...
...The Republican Administration, with President Eisenhower's lack of leadership and Secretary Dulles' lack of judgment, has been permitted to dissipate the store of world friendship and respect this country earned under the aegis of Wilson, Roosevelt, and Truman...
...The rich legacy of popular favor the Party inherited from the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations has been dissipated by inept and irresponsible Congressional leadership...
...by employees whose unions have won for them, and others, the highest standard of living in history, with paid holidays and vacations as well as a 40 hour—or less—work week...
...His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Frontier, and the New Republic...
...The F.D.R...
...The Democrats, by winning Congressional elections without the Presidency, make enactment of many features of the Party program virtually impossible...
...Certainly our "prosperity," given the inequitable distribution of the national income, is not what the American people could enjoy in this land of abundance...
...What deeply disturbs voters now are today's issues, not the old issues of the New Deal era...
...Wisconsin elected a Democratic Senator for the first time in a quarter of a century...
...What exactly is the Democratic Party program for assuring that every citizen shall receive adequate health care without an exorbitant price tag...
...What does this mean...
...For eliminating racial and religious discrimination in American life...
...The Congressional leaders have temporized with the Party's program to placate Southerners who claim the Democratic label but would be found in the right wing of the Republican Party if they lived in any other section of the country...
...the voters just liked the general with a genial smile and simple manner...
...Is the present character of the Democratic Party attuned to the realities of American political life today...
...More and more the amateur politicians who run these unofficial, voluntary organizations select the candidates, raise the money, and run the campaigns, often in contest with the regular party officials, the old-guard political hacks, and the professional public relations men in the hire of special interests...
...When Adlai Stevenson and Estes Kefauver talked about such issues, the voters knew that other Democratic leaders opposed the stands taken by the Party's titular heads...
...This has made possible a new style of political organization, manned by emancipated housewives, those beneficiaries of the many labor-saving gadgets which adorn the American home...
...Traditionally Republican states like Maine and Kansas now have Democratic governors...
...The 1956 election underscored the outmoded character of the Democratic Party...
...In 1932 a desperate nation gambled that Franklin D. Roosevelt would be more likely than Herbert Hoover to cure the nation's ills...
...The Republicans spent dollars where the Democrats spent dimes...
...Perhaps then the Democrats would not continue to remain out of the main political business in our national life, as the Republicans did during the recent era when their Party was so out of tune with the political times...
...Moreover, the declining importance of the South in a national election is a matter of simple arithmetic...
...The exception was Wilson's first election, when a third party movement split the Republican vote enough so that a Democrat won an electoral vote plurality with a minority of popular votes...
...Nine out of ten voters read daily newspapers which supported die Republican ticket...
...But just wait...
...In 1956 the Democrats not only retained control of the Congress, but strengthened their grip...
...Strictly speaking, the Party has no program at all...
...And the Democrats have made some striking gains in the state legislatures during the past few years...
...But under present-day circumstances a Democratic Party dominated by Southern Democrats and big city bosses cannot win a national election...
...For seeking out a fresh and sense-making approach in our relations with the Soviet Union...
...They can take politics or leave it alone...
...The conclusion is clear that while the Democratic Party cannot win a Presidential election with the leadership of conservative Southerners tied to special interests like the oil industry or beholden to groups like the White Citizens Councils, it can win without them—if it carries the populous states outside the South...
...The days are gone when the big city machines can roll up huge majorities, swinging pivotal states into the Democratic column...
...What this trend reveals is that the big city bosses are no longer able to deliver votes as they did in the past, and that the Democratic Party's new sources of strength are outside the big cities as well as outside the South...
...That year the Democratic ticket increased its share of the popular vote in 14 of the 22 states west of the Mississippi River...
...To the Administration's bungling and standpatism, the Democratic Party has advanced as an alternative no constructive program for resolving the international crises of our time...
...The Democrats have failed to appreciate that the problems of our day are simply not the same as the problems of 20 years ago...
...For clearing from the American scene the slums which blight lives as well as cities...
...In recent years Democratic candidates for local and state offices have scored some impressive victories at the polls...
...It is significant that in the 1956 elections the Democratic gains were greatest in the Western and farming states where Democrats have not before been either strong or well organized...
...The machine politician who makes a profession of buying and selling political influence is being displaced from his niche in our society...
...The failure of the Democratic Party to present the voters with an alternative to the Republicans' record on the issues is much more serious than a lack of agreement among Democratic leaders about questions of public policy...
...have lost when times were bad...
...For liquidating the imperial domination of native peoples...
...In every Presidential election in this century when the Democrats won—with one exception—they could have won without the South...
...forged a Party that displayed such superiority in leadership, organization, and program that it amassed great victories at the polls...
...In the last nation-wide test of public support, the Democratic Party failed as never before in recent times to win for its candidates the confidence of the American electorate...
...For converting the world's resources from military to peaceful pursuits...
...The Congressional leaders have failed to support programs for which Democratic candidates received a popular mandate in elections...
...For relieving the tensions in the troubled areas of Africa, the Near East, and the Far East...
...After the 1954 elections the Congressional committee chairmanships, along with control of both houses, passed from Republican to Democratic hands...
...For a realistic explanation of the Party's gross failure at the Presidential level, we must consider, along with the strength of the Republicans, the weakness of the Democrats...
...if he fails to carry them, he loses, regardless of the South...
...His book, "Democracy and Catholicism in America," has just been published and is reviewed elsewhere in this issue...
...The Democrats, psychologically still living off the heritage of the Roosevelt-Truman Administrations, tried to peddle old stuff...
...The Party's record in foreign policy has been as dismal as in domestic policy, even though in our relations with other countries the security as well as the welfare of the American nation are at stake...
...Just as important, so does his wife...
...Where is the Democratic Party program for the international control of atomic energy...
...But the proposals were those of the candidates...
...But in past elections Democratic candidates have defeated glamorous Republicans who enjoyed the lion's share of press support and campaign funds...
...Others offered the stock arguments that the Republicans had all the advantages of press and money...
...For utilizing to the optimum for public benefit the country's scarce water resources...
...For securing the prospect of worthwhile and dignified lives for our aged...
...To20 The PROGRESSIVE day the "common" citizen has the independence and the competence, as well as the leisure, to engage in political activity...
...The mathematical fact is that the Presidential candidate who carries a majority of the populous states like New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio can win the office...
...In 1956 the Democratic candidates for House and Senate offices necessarily campaigned on issues of interest to their constituents...
...This new type of political organization differs markedly from the old style machine...
...That year the Democratic Presidential slate received a larger percentage of the popular vote in Indiana than in Louisiana, in Ohio than in Virginia, in Pennsylvania than in Florida, in Michigan than in Texas, in Minnesota than in South Carolina...
...The 1948 elections most clearly revealed .that the Democrats do not need the South to win the Presidency...
...Yet by failing to carry through on Party promises, the Party loses even more electoral support throughout the country, making victory in a national election more unlikely...
...They appealed to the voters to remember the past achievements of the Party, and to have confidence in the ability of Democrats to extend and improve New Dealish policies, even though virtually every successful New Deal reform has now been accepted in principle by the Republican leadership...
...Subtle but definite changes, stimulated by the crises of depression and war, have altered the nature of our politics...
...It is in these new style political organizations scattered throughout the cities and suburbs of this country that the vitality among Democrats is found today...
...formula worked so well for so long that the Democrats continued to offer the American people more warmed-over, watered-down New Deal...
...The Democratic Party now lacks a program adequate to meet the current political needs of the American people...
...For example, in California, Oregon, and Washington, and in Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska, Stevenson ran stronger and Eisenhower weaker than in 1952...
...The Democrats have traditionally relied on the votes from Democratic strongholds—the "solid South" and the big cities—to win Presidential elections...
...This setback was readily explained by indulgent friends of the Party...
...It is time, in this interlude following defeat, for the Democrats to rethink the role of a political party as an inventor and promoter of solutions to political problems, and for the Democratic Party to adopt a forward-looking, creative approach in formulating a program which serves the current needs of the American people—the needs of the Fifties, not the Thirties...
...For promoting international understanding and cooperation through the United Nations...
...In 1956 the Stevenson-Kefauver slate lost by a greater margin than marked the Democratic defeat in 1952...
...These new facts of American political life bear directly on the recent fortunes of the Democratic Party...
...Some claimed that the demi-divine personality of Dwight D. Eisenhower accounted for the sweep: the election was a personality contest without any party significance...
...What is the Democratic Party program for stamping out the growing traffic in drugs and narcotics...
...For aiding the underdeveloped areas of the world to eliminate poverty, disease, and strife...
Vol. 22 • June 1958 • No. 6
