Insoluble

In the last report in this space, the first of several attempts to anticipate the course of the 1976 presidential scramble, I suggested a rule: watch the money. My thesis was that money is more important now than ever (because of the proliferation of preferential primaries, and changes in the Democratic Party’s delegate selection rules that complicate and expand the number of jurisdictions in which candidates must compete); money is more scarce than ever (the new campaign financing laws restrict the amounts individuals can give and candidates can spend); as a result of this “reform,” candidates are using expensive direct mail appeals to large numbers of small contributors, and, hence, raising money costs more money than it used to cost, and requires more long-range planning. The conclusion I drew was that this conferred a great advantage on the three candidates—Senators Lloyd Bentsen and Henry Jackson and Governor George Wallace—who have a lot of money already in the bank (Bentsen has $1.5 million, and the other two have more) and have money machines humming.

Now for rule two: the Democratic Party has an insoluble problem. The name of the problem is Wallace.