The Real Majority

Political rhetoric tends to achieve a life of its own, congealing into cant and conventional wisdom, an unexamined shorthand. In a forthcoming book, The Real Majority (Coward-McCann Inc.; $7.95), Political Analysts Richard Scammon and Ben J. Wattenberg take a canny inventory of the nation's political assumptions and vocabulary. They conclude that some of the preconceptions of both Democrats and Republicans need a fresh going over.

Scammon and Wattenberg, who describe themselves as independent Democrats, find that liberals, primarily Democrats, have made the profound mistake of equating firmness against crime and rioting with racism. This blunder gives conservatives and Republicans a decided advantage: "The law-and-order issue today is essentially a civil libertarian's issue, and the question that must be asked is: What about the civil liberties of hardworking, crime-scared Americans, black and white, many of whom happen to be Democrats? It is black Democrats who face the worst crime rates in America."

Shifting Center. The Democrats, say the authors, have failed to recognize the mass of Americans' "nonnegotiable demands" for tranquillity. Republicans have understood the fears and desires about law and order much better. In fact, some of the more conservative Republicans have exaggerated and exploited the issue. But the Republicans, say Scammon and Wattenberg, have been much less perceptive in other areas, notably Middle America's acceptance of Medicare, federal aid to education, the need to rebuild cities and to face up to problems of race.

The "real majority" in America, according to the authors, remains "the un-young, un-poor, un-black, un-college and un-political." This group occupies a middle ground that Democrats and Republicans alike often fail to define intelligently. For the center shifts. Those in the middle have, according to the authors, become somewhat more conservative on such social issues as crime, race, drugs and pornography (this is in part contradicted by much greater permissiveness about what now can be printed or shown on the screen, and greater open-mindedness about marijuana than existed only a few years ago). At the same time, the center has grown more liberal on economic issues.

Goldwater's Lesson. Both parties, Scammon and Wattenberg argue, tend to magnify impulses at either extreme. Some Democrats speak of forming a new coalition of the left composed of the young, the black, the poor, the well-educated, while relegating others, especially white union labor, to the ranks of "racists." But, the authors observe, only the blacks generally vote as a bloc, not the young or the poor. Enfranchising 18-year-olds will lower the average age of all voters slightly, but it will remain above 40. Besides, "being a young American apparently connotes nothing more than a chronological fact; some are liberal, some conservative."

Scammon and Wattenberg also challenge the assumption by some Republicans that a full-blown Southern strategy could succeed. Nixon received less than one-fifth of his 1968 electoral votes from the South: "Just let the voters feel that their President is trying to outbid George Wallace in the South and watch those slim, non-Southern pluralities melt all over the nation . . . The last Republican presidential aspirant who waged a Southern strategy reveals how successful that approach is. Barry

Goldwater, in 1964, carried five Southern states and Arizona."

Nixon faces another pitfall. "Presidents get elected by occupying the center territory," Scammon and Wattenberg argue. "But once they are inaugurated, it is no simple matter to stay there." The authors suggest that Nixon increasingly will have to decide issues on the basis of what is best for the nation, not for the right or the left. In so doing, he erodes his support on one side or the other and, over the long run, both.

In 1972, Nixon will enjoy all of the obvious campaign advantages of an incumbent. But, say the authors, "his popularity seems somewhat hollow, a popularity that is extremely vulnerable to a bad turn of events. If the Democratic candidate in 1972 is a man of the center, he may do very well in a personality versus personality contest."

In any case, Scammon and Wattenberg suggest that the successful candidates in most races will be those who re-examine their language and move closer to the "real majority." For all the crossfire of "bigot" and "fascist," Scammon and Wattenberg conclude, "We recommend to would-be leaders of the people that they trust the people and listen to the people before leading the people."

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