I've just read Mark Stricherz's article "Goodbye, Catholics" in Commonweal Magazine. Stricherz is apparently working on a book detailing the movement of the Democratic party away from the New Deal constituency of white southerners, union members, and Catholics (i.e. "white ethnics") to black southerners, college graduates, and feminists, and if this article is a preview, it might be worth reading:
[Fred Dutton's] goal was nothing less than to end the New Deal coalition, the electoral alliance that had supported the party since 1932 around a broad working-class agenda. In its place, Dutton sought to build a “loose peace constituency,” a collection of groups opposed to the Vietnam War and more generally the military-industrial complex. To this end, Dutton recognized that Democrats would need to appeal to three new constituencies-young people, college-educated suburbanites, and feminists-while ceasing to woo two old ones-Catholics and working-class whites.
We're all familiar with the theories that the Nixon campaign pulled white southerners into the Republican party, that "secular" delegates pushed the religious out of the Democratic party in the 1970s, and that union members have switched from reliable Democrats to swing voters. This is the first time I've ever seen the idea expressed that Democratic party leadership intentionally traded the working-class vote for the college-graduate vote. Is anyone else familiar with this notion?
Posted by Ben Brumfield at July 24, 2006 06:03 PM