WHAT THE CLASS WARRIORS WROUGHT:

Primary colors: How a little-known task force helped create Red State/Blue State America (Mark Stricherz, 11/23/2003, Boston Globe)

There have been a number of attempts to explain this growing divide. In their 1991 book "Chain Reaction," Thomas and Mary Edsall argued that the Democratic Party's embrace of the civil rights movement, followed by Nixon's Southern Strategy, caused many working-class whites to desert their ancestral party in favor of the GOP. In 1991, E.J. Dionne Jr. extended the argument in his book "Why Americans Hate Politics," contending that Republicans "were able to destroy the dominant New Deal coalition by using cultural and social issues -- race, the family, 'permissiveness,' crime -- to split New Deal constituencies."

But both explanations are overly broad and incomplete. If region and culture divide the parties, it is not simply the legacy of the upheavals of the 1960s. It is also the legacy of a forgotten 28-member body called the Commission on Party Structure and Delegate Selection (1969 -- 72), better known as the McGovern or McGovern-Fraser commission.

The McGovern commission, chaired first by Senator George McGovern and then Congressman Don Fraser of Minnesota, ended the old boss system of choosing presidential nominees and helped create the modern presidential primary system. This led to a class shift in each party, as affluent liberals gained more power in the Democratic Party while working-class conservatives won more say in the GOP.

Perhaps most importantly, the commission changed the rationale for choosing presidential nominees: Picking a candidate who was likely to win became less important than choosing one who represented the views of primary voters and special-interest groups. Today the legacy lives on in the insurgent candidacy of quintessential "blue-state" candidate Howard Dean. [...]

The McGovern commission brought the old system to an end. No longer would party bosses have control over two-thirds to four-fifths of the delegates. Not only could they no longer appoint ex-officio delegates, but just as importantly -- and against the desires of many on the commission -- a number of state legislatures decided to institute new elections in order to comply with the jumble of new rules. Thus the modern presidential primary was born. In 1968, 16 states held primaries. By 1972, 28 did -- and George McGovern himself became the Democratic nominee. In 2004, primaries are scheduled in 33 states.

The McGovern commission also changed the makeup of the party's followers. No longer would nonunionized working-class whites have the same influence in party affairs. As polls have consistently shown, they don't tend to vote in primary races, while college-educated professionals do. The latter are not only more civically engaged in general than their working-class counterparts, they are more knowledgeable about party affairs. As a result, more upper-middle-class voters joined the party and had more say within it. [...]

Some conservative pundits have lately been chortling over the prospect of a McGovern-style debacle in 2004. But the point of the McGovern commission wasn't to win elections, but to transform the party. As McGovern himself says today of his commission's work, "I'm not saying we'd get a better presidential nominee. It just means that whoever we nominate would go through a democratic process. Democracy has always been a gamble, and if we make mistakes, at least they are our mistakes."

Who but a man of the Left could say with a straight face that a system rigged in order to transfer power from the working and middle classes to the upper-middle represents a triumph of democracy?

Posted by Orrin Judd at November 23, 2003 11:38 AM