TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/091691/0916470.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.7 KB | 127 lines

                                                                                BOOKS, Page 72

Democrats as Cannibals


Two merciless new books explore why the party of the working class
does not seem to work anymore

By LAURENCE I. BARRETT


    Among Democrats' tribal practices during the past two
decades, supping on their losing presidential candidate has
become hard custom. The party not only deprives its recent
champion the ancient role of shadow leader; it also devours him
as the solitary symbol of defeat. From George McGovern to
Michael Dukakis, the nominees ran flawed campaigns. But by
always heaping all the blame on their latest loser, the
Democrats conduct an exercise in denial. That allows the party
to ignore the collective blunders that explain why it has lost
five of the past six presidential elections.

    Now, as the Democrats listlessly begin the 1992 nomination
ritual, two new books examine the party's distress with
merciless precision. Thomas Byrne Edsall's Chain Reaction: The
Impact of Race, Rights, and Taxes on American Politics (Norton;
340 pages; $22.95) and Peter Brown's Minority Party: Why
Democrats Face Defeat in 1992 and Beyond (Regnery Gateway; 352
pages; $21.95) track the Democratic coalition's decay since the
1960s, when the white middle class began to defect. The
increasing militancy of the civil rights movement -- soon
followed by gays, feminists and other groups demanding equity
-- speeded the exodus.

    From Harry Truman's time through Lyndon Johnson's, the
party's presidential wing expanded its role as protector of
society's stepchildren. That worked politically as long as
reforms were seen as reversing blatant injustices and as long
as the economy grew fast enough to raise nearly everyone's
standard of living. Those critical caveats finally evaporated.
As demands for equality of diverse kinds grew more strident,
changing economic trends and federal tax policy began to enrage
Middle Americans who had been the core of Democratic majorities.

    Meanwhile, the old liberal wing surrendered the nominating
machinery to left-leaning activists who never met a grievance
they would not embrace. Edsall recalls a seminal line from the
1972 platform: "We must restructure the social, political and
economic relationships throughout the entire society in order
to ensure the equitable distribution of wealth and power." To
many white voters, that approach -- fleshed out in government
regulations and court decisions -- was perceived as meaning
fewer rewards for them and more for undeserving recipients of
federal largesse.

    Edsall and Brown cover much of the same ground in reaching
a common conclusion: the myopia of Democratic leaders
contributed heavily to a rearrangement of social allegiances.
Democrats can prosper in national elections only when they
persuade the middle classes to unite with the lower classes. But
Democratic fecklessness enabled the Republicans to woo the
middle classes into a union with the wealthy on Election Day.

    The authors approach their subject from different
perspectives. Brown, who writes for Scripps-Howard News Service,
emphasizes the view from the ground up and adopts a snarly tone.
Edsall, a Washington Post reporter who has written extensively
on political sociology, provides a broader historical analysis
from the top down. His attitude is more mournful than damning.

    In Minority Party, Brown introduces ordinary citizens
whose hopes, fears and prejudices explain much about today's
politics. We hear from two skilled hardhats who get along well
on the job and whose life-styles would indicate similar
political views. But Justin Darr, a white defector from the
Democrats, objects to intrusive government programs. Howard
Jeffers, who is black, remains loyal to the party he sees as
protecting the little guy. Brown points out that when the
Democratic National Committee sponsored a massive opinion survey
in 1985, seeking ways to recapture voters like Darr, the results
were suppressed for fear of offending minority leaders. The
author even chastises the party for selecting a well-qualified
black as national chairman; bad imagery, Brown insists.

    Edsall's Chain Reaction is particularly strong in tracing
the conservative movement's adroitness in exploiting liberals'
errors. The right wing's basic tenets changed little between
1964 and 1980. Yet while Barry Goldwater came across as a
reactionary, Ronald Reagan established himself as spokesman for
Everyman. Reagan altered some nuances, to be sure, but the major
change in the interim was that many citizens had lost confidence
in Washington as a fount of social progress.

    During the same period, Edsall argues persuasively, the
Democratic leadership refused to face the political implications
of the emerging black underclass. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, as
a Johnson adviser in 1965, had the prescience to describe the
"tangle of pathology" resulting from the breakdown of ghetto
family life. But many liberals denounced his analysis as racist.
In failing to address unpleasant realities, the Democrats
handed conservatives harsh symbols -- from Reagan's "welfare
queen" to the Bush campaign's Willie Horton -- with which to
stoke white fury.

    Will that anger endure, along with Republican control of
the White House? Neither author provides a ballot of hope to
Democrats yearning for reversal of fortune soon. But the party
that celebrates its 200th anniversary next year has survived
long exiles in the wilderness before. Partisans suffering
terminal despair should recall that in 1964, speculation about
the imminent demise of the G.O.P. came awfully cheap.