Follow up: Catholics and Democrats

In response to a previous post about his book, author Mark Stricherz makes the following points about changes within the Democratic Party, discovered as he researched:

1. The Democratic Catholic bosses of the post-war era were not, contra the conventional wisdom, passive observers on racial matters. They kept blacks in the Democratic coalition. The key figures were David L. Lawrence, mayor of Pittsburgh (1945-58) and governor of Pennsylvania (1958-63), and John M. Bailey, chairman of the Connecticut state Democratic party (1947-1975) and chairman of the Democratic National Committee (1961-68).

First, both Lawrence and Bailey swung their delegations behind the strong civil rights plank at the 1948 Democratic convention. Second, Lawrence and Bailey created the original Democratic Party reform commission, the Lawrence Commission (1965-68). They made it possible for Southern blacks to have a say in nominating the party’s presidential nominee.

2. The key antiwar liberals on the McGovern Commission (in order, Fred Dutton, Ken Bode, Eli Segal, and Anne Wexler) did not seek to democratize the party’s presidential nominating system. They wanted to create a nomination process that would do the following:

— pound the final nail in the coffin of the FDR coalition and create a McGovern coalition (Dutton)

— ensure the nomination of an antiwar Democrat in 1972 (Bode and Segal)

— create a nominating system that empowered not just voters, but also activists (Segal, Bode, and Wexler)

The antiwar liberal accomplished those goals through the following:

— requiring informal delegate quotas for women and young people at the 1972 Democratic convention. As commission research director Bode figured out, both groups were more likely to oppose the Vietnam War. These informal quotas allowed feminist and young baby boomers to enter the Democratic coalition and become prominent players in it.

— greatly expanding the number of state caucus elections, which favor activists and college-educated voters

3. Feminist leaders Bella Abzug and Gloria Steinem lobbied successfully for mandating hard quotas for female delegates, not because they wanted equal representation but because they wanted to dominate the party platform on abortion and the Equal Rights Amendment

4. Governor Robert Casey of Pennsylvania was excluded from speaking at the 1992 Democratic convention because he sought to give a pro-life speech. I confirmed this with one of the five Democratic officials in the position to know.