A Future That Is Up for Grabs

FOR weeks before the election that they lost so badly, a number of Democrats were engaged in some curious carryings-on. Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter was up in Chicago huddled with Mayor Richard Daley. Jean Westwood, McGovernite head of the Democratic National Committee, was down in Alabama chatting with George Wallace. George Meany and Senator Henry ("Scoop") Jackson were corralling votes, not for Nov. 7, but for Dec. 9 --the date of the next national committee meeting. Many Democrats were much less concerned with the election --which they took to be a foregone, forlorn conclusion--than with maneuvering to come out ahead in the murky, vengeful postelection period.

Though the future leadership of the party is up for grabs and several hands will be grasping for it, there was wide agreement on several basics:

-- The party will edge back toward the center of the road in terms of both issues and organization changes, with the first skirmish coming over Westwood's retention.

-- Withstanding the Nixon landslide remarkably well, Democrats managed to keep control of both houses of Congress, and they are in far better shape than the Republicans were after the 1964 Goldwater fiasco.

-- The 1976 talk centers on Edward Kennedy as the most likely candidate to restore party unity.

Give a Little. Before the party is revived, however, there will have to be some painful rearrangement. The Democrats are suffering from what might be called an aggravated case of future shock. The McGovernites had maneuvered the party into trying the "politics of tomorrow," and the future definitely did not work. Coalition, compromise politics had not been proved obsolete as many McGovernites once claimed; it turned out to be alive and well in the hands of Richard Nixon, who clasped to his bosom the very groups the McGovernites had antagonized: labor, white ethnics, the South. "Nixon would have been beaten by someone who could have held the grand coalition together," said Henry Jackson in a postmortem. "How could any one candidate alienate labor, the religious groups, the South and others in one election?" Adds Hubert Humphrey: "We don't need to indulge in a massive purge in the party, but the leadership must be closely related by word and deed to the working people, to the small town, Main Street people and the man in the shops. Unless we become acceptable to this middle America, we've had it."

Democratic Party leaders are retreating toward the sanctuary of the center, where they have always felt more secure. Arkansas Governor Dale Bumpers, chairman of the Democratic Governors' Caucus, has convened a meeting to chart a strategy of moderation. As Governor Jimmy Carter goes round inviting Democrats to join him in planning the future of the party, he emphasizes that the "McGovern people are not in charge of the invitation lists" and that "everyone is going to have to give a little."

Among the first and most important compromises expected concerns the rules governing the selection of convention delegates. The McGovern commission reforms attracted many recruits to the party and gave them instant responsibility by setting what amounted to quotas for them at the convention. While younger people and minorities were welcomed, however, old-line regulars, and labor and ethnic groups were to a large extent shut out. Some argue that the election was already lost when faithful Democrats gazed at the convention on television, did not see a soul on the floor they recognized, and did not care for those they did see. The prospect now is for a new formula that avoids the stigma of the quota system. It would give the traditional factions some additional strength and at the same time retain some of the gains won by the reform wing.

Survival. The centrists will get the first opportunity to test their strength when the Democratic National Committee meets in December. A movement is afoot to topple the most visible symbol of McGovernism, Jean Westwood. The leading plotters are George Meany, eager to help reshape the party whose candidate he disdained; his chief political lieutenant, Al Barkan, director of Big Labor's Committee on Political Education (COPE); and Scoop Jackson, one of the most vehement of McGovern's preconvention rivals. They are even supported by some McGovern followers, who describe Westwood as a "scheming nonentity." Potential replacements include Robert Strauss, the Texas lawyer who has served as party treasurer; New York State Chairman Joseph Crangle; and California State Chairman Charles Manatt.

But Westwood may not be that easy to dislodge. Her term nominally runs to 1976, and leaders like Edmund Muskie and Ted Kennedy are reluctant to participate in a party bloodbath so soon after the electoral massacre. Westwood, moreover, is playing her own brand of survival politics. Rather than stacking key party posts with McGovernites, she has been appointing people from other sections of the party. Because she was shut out of any major role in the Mc-Govern campaign, she has had time to do a little work for herself. Thus her travels to see Wallace and other Southern Governors. Reminding people that she managed Humphrey's campaign in Utah in 1968, she insists: "I have run coalition politics in my own state, and I can do it here."

Healer. As she fights for a place in the old order, Westwood will have some imitators among McGovernites on the local and state levels. As separate entities, McGovern organizations largely self-destructed this week. But many local workers will stay on to fight another day--within the established party apparatus. Time and again, party regulars who could not take McGovern have warmed up to some of his youthful supporters. If there was ever a chance for a collision, it was in Chicago when the McGovernites arrived. The Daley regulars had braced for the worst, only to be pleasantly shocked when many youngsters turned out to be eager to learn the political trade at the hands of proven, if not spotless, masters.

As they look ahead--a more cheerful exercise than looking back--Democrats of almost every faction see Kennedy as their prime prospect for 1976. With the party badly in need of healing, they envision Kennedy as the leader best equipped to win back defectors while keeping the loyalties of young people and minorities (see box, page 28). But other contenders will doubtless crowd him, most of them located in Congress, where the Democratic action is likely to be found over the next four years. Standing out among the comers is Minnesota Senator Walter ("Fritz") Mondale, who won re-election with 57% of the vote in a state that Nixon won. A shrewd, diligent legislator who takes forthright liberal stands on most issues, Mondale, by being scrupulously fair, manages to make few enemies. Though not exactly loaded with charisma in the Kennedy fashion, he is a forceful extemporaneous speaker. Vastly attentive to the needs of his constituents, he flies home from Washington almost every other weekend.

The sturdy Democratic warhorses of the Senate--Humphrey, Muskie, Jackson--have doubtless passed out of the presidential picture, though they will continue to wield considerable influence in the party. Less venerable Senators like Harold Hughes and Birch Bayh are chafing to have another fling at the big prize. Outside of Washington, beyond the range of the media, bogged down in tax problems, few Governors are likely to surface as serious candidates; however, Dan Walker, the maverick who won the governorship in Illinois, bears watching. Implicated in a defeat of unique proportions, Sargent Shriver seems doomed as a presidential possibility; nor did his cheerful but often strident campaigning catch on with the electorate. Most enigmatic of all, George Wallace keeps his own counsel and nurses his shattered health. But he sees defeat turning the party in his ideological direction. "Its future is going to be in the hands of the average man," he said, "and not with the elitist group that took over in Miami."

Lost South. Anyone emerging as the front runner in the near future can look forward to a period of long and brutal testing. Apart from that personal ordeal, there will be other major problems. Most of the South may be beyond Democratic retrieval in presidential years. This week Richard Nixon won everything from the "Potomac to the Pedernales," as White House Aide Harry Dent likes to put it. Barring an improbable swing to the far right that would embrace Wallace supporters, the Democrats are not likely to offer a nominee who could beat the Republican, particularly if he happens to be a regional favorite like Spiro Agnew.

In the North, school integration, crime and other symptoms of the "social issue" will continue to divide traditional Democratic strongholds. Given the right candidate, Democratic leaders think, most of the blue-collar, ethnic vote can be recaptured. Said Muskie after the election: "We've got to assure working-class Americans as well as poor Americans that their concerns are high in our priorities." For the past few years, however, the Democratic Party has been drifting away from its moorings among blue-collar workers; Mc-Govern's candidacy simply speeded up the flight. The intellectuals who plan party strategy and the lesser lights who are supposed to carry it out have become mistrustful of each other. It will take skillful brokerage by party professionals to make peace between the two hostile camps if the Democrats want to continue thinking of themselves as the majority party.

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