Democrats As Cannibals

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.