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The Democratic Party and Its Ethnic Problem
| Article
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13613 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
Date : |
4 / 1988 |
6,142 Words |
| Author
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Edward Shapiro
Edward Shapiro is professor of history emeritus at Seton Hall
University. He is completing a book on the Crown Heights
(Brooklyn, New York) riot of 1991. |
Today's Democratic Party finds itself in an incongruous position. As has been true for approximately half a century, it has a majority in both houses of Congress, controls most state legislatures, and over half of the governors' mansions. While some observers have argued that this predominance can be partially explained by the Democratic gerrymandering of state legislatures which has diluted the impact of Republican votes in state and congressional elections, pollsters have conclusively demonstrated that since the 1930s a much greater percentage of voters have consistently identified with the Democratic than with the Republican Party. (It must be noted, however, that today's self-styled "independent" voters are far more numerous than those who call themselves Democrats.)
This Democratic ascendancy is the most important single fact about national politics since the inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933. On only two occasions since then have the Democrats not controlled at least one house of Congress. Contemporary Democrats have good reason for believing that they speak for the "people" and not "interests," and that they have a natural claim on national leadership. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the most prominent liberal Democratic intellectual, has even developed a theory of political "cycles" to explain those times when the Democrats find themselves out of office.
According to Schlesinger, the nation's political history has consisted of periods of vigorous reform, commitment to national purpose, and Democratic rule followed by eras of lethargy, private greed, and Republican dominance. During the latter, the public recharges its political batteries preparatory to launching the next cycle of reform. Republican victories are thus not due to the appeal of their candidates or proposals, or even to a popular disenchantment with Democrats. Rather, it is because of the dissipation of reformist energies and the lassitude of an electorate more concerned with private pleasures than the public good. For Schlesinger, it is the absence and not the presence of reform that is abnormal. This belief in the normality of reform and in the Democratic claim on national leadership has been a staple in the teaching of American history in U.S. universities, and has made best-sellers of such books as Eric F. Goldman's Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform, William Leuchtenburg's The Perils of Prosperity, and Richard Hofstadter's The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It.
And yet despite its dominance of local politics and Congress, the Democratic Party has had great difficulty since World War II in
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