DYING PARTIES?

During the lull between the Pennsylvania primary (April 10) and the Texas primary (May 5), Washington talk has drifted to certain wider and cooler issues (“thumbsuckers”), like whether Mondale will have the delegate arithmetic before the convention (yes). The lull’s mega-thumbsucker, however, is this: Are we watching the slow demise of the Democratic Party? Or, as columnist Joe Kraft put it while meditating on the Mondale/ Hart bloodletting, Is the party of minorities becoming the minority party? Almost the same question was reasked by veteran political writer Teddy White, who, in reviewing the monumental impact that the banishment of runoffs from Southern primaries would have—an objective that Jesse Jackson seeks—wondered whether the solidly Democratic South would become de facto Republican. Kevin Phillips tends to see the Democratic splintering in doomsday terms.

Certainly the strains in the Democratic coalition are seismic. Jesse Jack-son’s slur on the Jewish community has rammed a wedge between blacks and Jews, two hitherto symbiotically related Democratic blocs. That split has been abundantly publicized. Less noticed, but heard on the street in Washington in the talk of upscale blacks, is an unguarded delight in the fact that Jesse is proving himself to be so much his own man, and “not taking orders from Jews.” Martin Luther King, according to this view, was very much under Jewish control, as are black mayors Thomas Bradley (Los Angeles), Coleman Young (Detroit), and even Andrew Young (Atlanta), who briefly strayed off the reservation on the PLO issue but is now squarely back in the corral, Atlanta having lots of Jewish money. The point is that the breach between the two communities is deeper than anyone (except outspoken blacks) will admit.

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Presidential Election

During the lull between the Pennsylvania primary (April 10) and the Texas primary (May 5), Washington talk has drifted to certain wider and cooler issues (“thumbsuckers”), like whether Mondale will have the delegate arithmetic before the convention (yes). The lull’s mega-thumbsucker, however, is this: Are we watching the slow demise of the Democratic Party? Or, as columnist Joe Kraft put it while meditating on the Mondale/ Hart bloodletting, Is the party of minorities becoming the minority party? Almost the same question was reasked by veteran political writer Teddy White, who, in reviewing the monumental impact that the banishment of runoffs from Southern primaries would have—an objective that Jesse Jackson seeks—wondered whether the solidly Democratic South would become de facto Republican. Kevin Phillips tends to see the Democratic splintering in doomsday terms.

Certainly the strains in the Democratic coalition are seismic. Jesse Jack-son’s slur on the Jewish community has rammed a wedge between blacks and Jews, two hitherto symbiotically related Democratic blocs. That split has been abundantly publicized. Less noticed, but heard on the street in Washington in the talk of upscale blacks, is an unguarded delight in the fact that Jesse is proving himself to be so much his own man, and “not taking orders from Jews.” Martin Luther King, according to this view, was very much under Jewish control, as are black mayors Thomas Bradley (Los Angeles), Coleman Young (Detroit), and even Andrew Young (Atlanta), who briefly strayed off the reservation on the PLO issue but is now squarely back in the corral, Atlanta having lots of Jewish money. The point is that the breach between the two communities is deeper than anyone (except outspoken blacks) will admit.