To the Editor:

I don’t mean to cavil, since the article by Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab on the 1972 elections [“The Election & the National Mood,” January] seems to me to be basically sound in its three major points: 1) that McGovern’s errors rather than Nixon’s popularity explain the landslide election; 2) that the election did not represent a referendum on specific issues or an ideological or racial backlash; 3) that the Democratic party still retains the underlying trust of most Democrats who voted for Nixon.

But the article also contains three other assumptions that should be corrected: 1) that McGovern misread the mood of the electorate as “alienated” and wrongly assumed that he could win the Wallace vote on the same terms he could attract upper-middle-class professionals; 2) that the Democratic convention ended the election by exposing the extremism and evangelical moralism of the McGovernites; and 3) that an “ideological” candidate like McGovern or Goldwater cannot win a national election. These three points are not substantiated with the same careful use of evidence that Messrs. Lipset and Raab use for their major conclusions.

1) “Alienation” and the Wallace vote. Messrs. Lipset and Raab give Nixon a 2 to 1 edge over McGovern with 1968 Wallace voters. I take it they are rounding off the CBS figures published in the National Journal which assert that nation-wide Nixon won 60 per cent of the Wallace vote, McGovern 33 per cent, with 7 per cent not responding or voting for Schmitz, the American Independent party candidate. Nixon thus did only slightly better among Wallace voters than among voters generally, among whom he won 61 per cent to McGovern’s 38 per cent. However, if we look behind the Wallace figures a remarkable fact emerges. In the South, where McGovern did not campaign, Nixon’s ratio was reported as 3-1, or 70 per cent Nixon, 23 per cent McGovern, 7 per cent residual. This means that outside the South, where Wallace got half his 1968 support, Nixon’s margin among Wallace voters was only 7-6, or 50 per cent Nixon, 43 per cent McGovern, 7 per cent residual. Given the utter collapse of the McGovern campaign, its mishandling of the war issue, and its many remarks inimical to Wallace voters, McGovern’s showing of 43 per cent outside the South is remarkable. It is matched by the fact that before the Eagleton affair, McGovern was running nearly even with Nixon in Texas, an impossibility without substantial East Texas Wallaceite support. Also, the plurality of Wallace voters in the Texas primary voted for Sissy Farenthold, the New-Politics candidate par excellence. This suggests to me that the McGovern strategists were correct in their demagogic assumption that shrill attacks on Nixon by a “clean,” neo-populist candidate were good tactics, however irresponsible they may have been on other grounds. McGovern’s problem with Wallaceites was not his ideological fervor, but the fact that after the Eagleton affair he was not “clean,” not a real contrast to Nixon. Even so, in those states where he campaigned he appears to have done better among Wallace voters than among voters generally. The Wallace vote is thus the thinnest of the supports which Messrs. Lipset and Raab supply for their conclusion that “George McGovern and his strategists totally misjudged the character of the American electorate.”

The overall conclusion is also open to dispute. Playing on the alienation of disgruntled younger-professionals and Wallaceites was in fact a good Democratic strategy for 1972, just as the good counter-strategy was to associate this with disorder, incompetence, and cynicism. The fact that the counter-strategy won for Nixon does not alter the fact that the general McGovern strategy targeted groups that would have been targeted by a Kennedy, Muskie, or Humphrey. Its problem was one of execution, not strategic concept.

2) The effect of the convention. It of course suits defeated factions to argue that candidates who do not make adequate compromises with them in conventions cannot win the subsequent election. This was the argument of moderate Republicans post-1964 and now of moderate Democrats post-1972. Though I personally prefer a moderate style of politics, the argument is becoming increasingly difficult to sustain with evidence of electoral behavior. Messrs. Lip-set and Raab argue correctly that the fact that McGovern’s support did not rise after the 1972 convention was a danger signal. But it was not, as Norman Podhoretz [in “What the Voters Sensed,” January] and the authors seem to think, the end of the campaign. Mr. Podhoretz writes: “McGovern trailed by the same twenty points in November as he had trailed by in July.” True, but there was in fact considerable movement behind these figures. Here are some representative figures based on follow-up studies with the same voters between July and September and made available to reporters by the McGovern organization:

On the face of it these look very stable, supporting the conclusion that “nothing changed” after the Democratic convention. But like the figures on the Wallace vote, they are worth some analysis. Of the 56 per cent of the electorate who were for Nixon in September, only 43 per cent had been with him in July. Of the 34 per cent for McGovern in September, only 23 per cent had been with him in July. Thus between July and September nearly a third of the electorate switched from one category to another. I believe that the even more detailed Nixon polling figures would, if made public, confirm this unprecedented fluidity.

The general principles of movement appear to have been as follows. Those who switched from McGovern to Nixon were about evenly split between younger college-educated voters and younger Wallace-leaning voters. Not the convention but McGovern’s general level of candor and competence seems to have been salient with both of these groups. Those who switched from undecided to Nixon were mostly upper-income independents. Those who switched from Nixon and undecided to McGovern were mostly “behavioral Democrats” coming home to roost: low- and middle-income blacks and Catholics. Those who moved from Nixon to undecided were almost exclusively upper-income Republicans disturbed about Watergate and corruption. Between September and November other movements occurred, but it appears that most of the important shifts had occurred by early September.

These movements in the electorate along with the unprecedented levels of ticket-splitting suggest a more volatile situation in 1972 than one would expect from a reading of Messrs. Lipset and Raab. . . . I believe that it would have been more accurate had Messrs. Lipset, Raab, and Podhoretz said that the convention created suspicions of McGovern but that it took subsequent events to confirm them. McGovern’s main strength against Nixon was (exactly as his supporters argued) that he was unknown even after the convention to most of the electorate. This was turned into a weakness when the Eagleton affair and McGovern’s modification of his stands on key issues made him known only too well in an unfavorable light. But it was in the campaign, not in the California primary or in the nominating convention, that McGovern lost the election. It is important to stress these fine distinctions to understand how fluid our political system has become.

3) The end of ideology. It is traditional to assume that only a “pragmatic” candidate who makes broad-based compromises can win a national election. Underlying this assumption is another one, that the politics of elite competition for the nomination reflect realities of mass electoral behavior, since each competing faction presumably can deliver votes in the general election. Yet the entire postwar American experience—and particularly in the period 1964-72—has served to weaken ties that bind nominating factions to national electoral behavior. In one sense this is Messrs. Lipset and Raab’s point. They argue that factional leaders, in mobilizing the support necessary for a nomination, may alienate voters they need in a national election. But the volatility of the electorate in the 1972 elections may justify a more unsettling conclusion: regardless of one’s route to victory in the nomination, regardless of the compromises one makes (or fails to make) to consolidate factional support, it is possible to win an election in the campaign itself. This means that we are moving into a period of party nonalignment when campaign professionals will have more to say about election dynamics than social scientists or established party leaders. Increasingly, electoral movements do not reflect social trends but (as the Lipset-Raab title aptly suggests) ephemeral questions of “national mood”; this does not rule out ideology. For any Presidential candidate the electorate must now be viewed as a problem in short-term strategy first, long-term coalition-building second. This is indeed a “new politics,” but the kind that neither “reformers” nor “bosses” will find congenial.

This is not the place to draw out the full implications of the new fluid, strategic politics. But one point is germane to the call for a return to balance and moderation with which Messrs. Lipset and Raab end their piece. The factors that in the past have made it prudent to be “pragmatic,” “moderate,” and “balanced” are fast disappearing from national Presidential politics. For a while we can rely on the natural good sense of the American people and informal networks of journalists and financial angels to preserve a stable, moderate political process. But the whole wisdom of our Constitution is that good sense is not enough. It must be buttressed by formal rules that guarantee a balanced system of government. In Presidential politics, the natural pursuit of victory under the current rules of party competition, factional rivalry, and media campaigning now tends toward immoderation and destabilization.

Thus, the same conditions that made it prudent for the McGovernites to lead a vendetta against the Old Politics, now make it prudent for their opponents to lead a counter-vendetta, and in much the same terms.

Josiah Lee Auspitz
Cambridge, Massachusetts

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To the Editor:

. . . Norman Podhoretz, and Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab spend considerable time analyzing the obvious—that is, the mystical (and by implication correct) insight of the American electorate. We well know by now that a majority of voters considered George McGovern too extreme. We know that Richard Nixon swept many groups which were formerly Democratic. We know that the coattail effect was missing, indicating a clear distaste for what Senator McGovern stood for.

But what, in fact, did Senator McGovern stand for? Instead of constantly pressing a finger on the American pulse, why is there no attempt to determine voter acuity? By whose postulate is the “national mood” necessarily right and Mr. McGovern wrong?

Mr. Podhoretz tells us that a “wave of domestic political disgust” was directed against those “who persisted in branding American participation in the Vietnam war a crime and in comparing . . . Nixon to Hitler.” Yet nowhere does he deign to assess the illegality of the war or the appropriateness of the Nixon-Hitler analogy in that context. . . .

Mr. Lipset and Mr. Raab tell us that the only significant ideological differences between McGovern voters and Nixon voters were on issues such as marijuana and amnesty. But they don’t stop to consider whether marijuana and amnesty are the two most pressing issues facing this country. . . . They ascribe the McGovern defeat to his excessive “moralism” (as if moralism were a despicable attribute) and to his failure to have “a much greater capacity for fudging issues” (as if a capacity for fudging issues were a virtue). Finally, with a surge of perspicacity, Messrs. Lipset and Raab observe: “George McGovern and his strategists totally misjudged the character of the American electorate.”

I agree. It’s Richard Nixon’s electorate—and Richard Nixon’s character. But somehow I was aware of that before I read the articles. . . .

Irvin Muchnick
Creve Coeur, Missouri

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To the Editor:

. . . Seymour Martin Lipset, Earl Raab, and Norman Podhoretz find that George McGovern failed because he did not recognize the mood of America—apathy, bigotry, self-satisfaction, unconcern, military flag-waving. I believe George McGovern understood the mood and tried to change it by advocating programs to improve the quality of life.

Judaism and Torah—to many of us—when converted into human relations mean a desire to help our fellow man, including those in the ghetto. New humanistic priorities and economic redistribution are required. The 1970’s are such a time. Our cities are on the verge of insolvency; the death of the cities will result in the death of the spirit of the people. I would prefer to hear Messrs. Lipset, Raab, and Podhoretz discuss how to improve life in America. America needs leadership, not consensus. . . .

Burt Zien
Milwaukee, Wisconsin

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To the Editor:

Norman Podhoretz’s piece is the most perceptive analysis I have seen of the mentality of George McGovern and his advisers. I think Mr. Podhoretz’s most telling phrase is that it was “to no one’s surprise but their own” that the McGovern people lost by one of the biggest margins in U.S. history.

This lack of touch with the mood and values of the electorate is the hallmark of the ideologue. Barry Goldwater also suffered from it (though in his case it was not compounded by the contempt for Middle Americans—i.e., most voters—that Mr. Podhoretz documents so well in McGovern). In fact, the same basic failing was built in to both the Goldwater and McGovern campaigns: both men were so blinded by the rays of their own sincerity and righteousness that they could not sense the distrust in which the country held them. They saw it only when it appeared on TV election night.

It is one of the blessings of our system that the electoral process almost automatically screens out candidates who are insensitive to the public mood. For an essential quality in a leader is the ability to sense the thoughts of those he would lead (whether he agrees with those thoughts or wants to change them), and a man who lacks this ability would make as poor a President as McGovern and Goldwater made candidates.

James N. Miller
Croton-on-Hudson, New York

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Seymour Martin Lipset and Earl Raab write:

Apparently virtue is its own punishment, and the few happy hairshirts love it. In a recent letter to supporters, George McGovern applied to himself and to politics the line of Camus: “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart.” In this vein has George McGovern interpreted the election as a failure of the benighted populace to measure up to this moral rectitude. Irvin Muchnick and Burt Zien echo this sentiment; perhaps little was learned after all.

Moralism in politics is a “despicable attribute,” in Mr. Muchnick’s phrase, because the term does not denote morality but the assumption that all one’s opponents are immoral. The only remedy, then, is on the order of large doses of castor oil, forcibly administered. When we indicated that McGovern was seen as “extremist,” it was not because of his attitudes toward issues such as welfare and taxes, but because of his attitudes toward democratic procedure, as suggested by his moralistic style.

But the heart of the matter is not that more Americans turned out to be “wrong” than “right.” This is not the way in which McGovern most significantly “misjudged the character of the American electorate.” Mr. Zien says we found that “George McGovern failed because he did not recognize the mood of America—apathy, bigotry, self-satisfaction, unconcern, military flag-waving.”

But the point was that McGovern failed partly because he mistakenly assumed that those qualities and attitudes formed the mood of those Americans opposed to him. Apparently McGovern and many of his followers still believe that they lost because most Americans were degenerate, immoral, and ignorant in the ways listed by Mr. Zien. The evidence we brought to bear suggested otherwise. Significant portions of the American people were not apathetic as much as they were ambivalent. They were not self-satisfied or unconcerned, but uneasy about the course of the country, discontented with Nixon’s performance, and tortured by the Democratic party’s failure to provide them with an acceptable alternative. There was no evidence, as we indicated, that bigotry played a significant role in the election—and much evidence that “military flag-waving” was counter to the majority mood of the country.

It is therefore remarkable that so many still see the election as merely a demonstration that the majority of Americans are racist, jingoistic slobs who have turned their backs on humanistic concerns. Our fear, reading some of the events of the past few months, is that Richard Nixon may have made the same mistaken assessment.

Josiah Lee Auspitz agrees with our major conclusions, but raises some technical points. First, our judgments concerning the distribution of the Wallace support did not come from the CBS Election Day survey, although we received a computer print-out from CBS, and used some of it in the article. The CBS researchers explicitly asked that their findings, concerning the way 1968 Wallace voters were distributed in 1972, not be used, because it seemed clear that their sample of self-reported Wallace voters was peculiar; it did not correspond to any pattern found in 1968.

Assorted polls did relate attitudes to pre-nomination Democratic preferences and all of them revealed that Wallace 1972 supporters stood at the polar extreme from McGovernites on almost all issues. They were generally more conservative, particularly on cultural issues, questions of law and order, and busing than Nixon backers. Further, insofar as polls queried Wallace supporters as to their second choice, or their two-party Presidential preference, they went to Nixon by two or three to one.

The evidence of voter volatility cited by Mr. Auspitz makes good sense. In general, it resembles the patterns reported in 1968 as well. Before coming to any final conclusion as to who shifted and why during the campaign, we prefer to wait for the findings of the sophisticated investigation of the Survey Research Center at the University of (Michigan.

There can be little question that party loyalties are weak in America. It is doubtful, however, that this is a new phenomenon. A look at the shifts which have occurred since 1946 suggests that the bulk of the electorate has been “available” on the Presidential level since Roosevelt died. There have been massive changes in every election from 1948 on. But again, it would seem clear that for a candidate to be perceived as at the “extreme” end of his party is a liability. “Moderate” Democrats, Republicans, and independents will turn to the more moderate candidate. Those to the Left of the Democrats or Right of the Republicans usually wind up voting for the “lesser evil” on their side. Humphrey lost relatively few votes on his Left. The various 1968 surveys do indicate, however, that he lost many in the “Center”—people who reacted against the demonstrations and violence at the Chicago convention and felt that these events indicated that the Democrats could not govern effectively. That is, most people who sympathized with the demonstrations ended up voting for Humphrey. A much larger proportion of non-Republicans who did not, backed Richard Nixon in 1968. A coalition must be oriented to finding those votes which will carry it over the 50 per-cent mark; they are almost always to be found in the Center, among voters who might go to the other coalitions.

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To the Editor:

In “The New Politics & the Democrats” [December 1972] Penn Kemble and Josh Muravchik raise one objection to what seems to me to be the fairest solution to the problem of choosing a President—a national primary with provision for a run-off if no candidate receives 40 per cent of the vote in the first election. Their objection is that primaries give “an advantage to energetic minorities.” It is probable, however, that a national primary would bring out the mainstream Democrats these authors wish to see return to the party. But of course if the now disaffected Southerners, unionists, etc. still did not choose to vote, there would be little that could be done to register their preferences.

A second objection to a national primary is that it would be wrong to give people who are state Democrats but Presidential Republicans (most Southern Democrats) so much power over naming the nominee. The problem is a real one, but unless we are prepared to concede to the Republicans about half the electoral votes needed to elect a President . . . , concessions to the South must be made. . . .

A third major objection is that the cost of such a national primary would increase our already huge campaign expenditures and thus dangerously increase the power of the wealthy to dictate choices. This too is a basically elitist view which assumes that the average voter has no real beliefs and can be easily manipulated by slick media campaigns. There is little evidence for this contention. The most famous media campaign in history, the Nixon effort in 1968, probably lost votes for its candidate, judging from Nixon’s drop in the polls from August to November of that year. . . .

The irrational system by which we nominate our Presidential candidates is the last respectable repository of anti-democratic practice in the United States. . . .

Peter Connolly
New Haven, Connecticut

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To the Editor:

. . . Penn Kemble and Josh Muravchik, in an article bulging with half-truths and innuendos, attempt to discredit the McGovern commission and to cast aspersions on the reform efforts within the Democratic party. Let me give a few examples. In a footnote, the authors discredit two decisions by Lawrence O’Brien without arguing the merits of either case. These decisions concerned the definition of a majority and the determination of eligibility to vote on challenges to members of a delegation. The decision to require 1,433 votes on the California challenge as constituting a majority was determined by the normal procedure—50 per cent of those eligible to vote. To require 1,509 votes for a majority would have required the McGovern forces to achieve a 52.65 per cent majority, obviously an unfair requirement. Nor do the authors present the facts on the other decision: in every single case on the convention floor, only those delegates—not delegations—who themselves were being challenged were prevented from voting on that challenge. Of the California delegation, 121 would have been seated regardless of the outcome of the California challenge. Since they themselves were not under challenge, those 121 were then of course allowed to vote on the challenge to the other 151 delegates.

In the article, the authors state that a representative of the Kentucky Democratic leadership was “dismayed when he was told that the rules required proportional representation by candidate preference in the election of delegates from each district.” Dismayed? At giving a candidate the number of delegates he has earned and deserves? I am under the impression that one of the mandates of the 1968 convention was to eliminate the unit rule. The Kentucky system does so admirably. The Kentucky delegate system specifically provides that a minority of 15 per cent or more be granted mandatory representation at the convention. Only Kentucky and Iowa chose to adopt the 15-per-cent guideline, and in both cases proportional representation was, in fact, required, not “recommended” as suggested by the authors.

The authors suggest that the Daley slate had been chosen in an “open, fair election.” They then suggest that the fact that the Daley organization “had not invited its opponents” (do they mean the people of Chicago?) “to participate in the drawing up of its slates,” was a “reform technicality.” One of the most important ideas to come from the McGovern commission was that everyone who wanted to run as a national delegate should have an equal opportunity to be judged by the people of the party as a whole and not just by the party leadership. But if the slates are drawn up by a closed, non-representative group, the choice of the people in “open, fair elections” is meaningless. Boss Tate of Philadelphia always maintained that democratic elections by the people were just fine with him, as long as he could nominate the candidates, i.e., draw up the slates. Boss Daley understands this principle very well.

The authors then suggest that the McGovern people took unfair advantage of the reform rules in terms of challenges. Since any individual or group could challenge the Credentials Committee (which by the way was controlled by a coalition of anti-McGovern delegates), how is it possible, as the authors suggest, that “in states where McGovern forces themselves violated the guidelines, the chosen slates were often allowed to go unchallenged”?

Finally, the authors say that “the delegation from Iowa did not have even one farmer.” Bob Burke, RR1, DeWitt, Iowa and George Leonard, Elkader, Iowa were both delegates from Iowa to the 1972 National Convention. They represented one-third of the delegates from the Second District of Iowa. And both are farmers. (Let me add here that I am the Vice-Chairperson of the Linn County Iowa Democratic Committee and I was a member of the 1972 Credentials Committee and a delegate to the convention.) Of course if I were to use the Kemble-Muravchik technique, I would now suggest that this unresearched “fact” is typical of hundreds of other “facts” used as evidence to support the authors’ contentions. However, I feel that the authors do raise some serious and valid objections to the commission guidelines (including some of their objections to the application of the unit rule to the California primary and some of their statements about quotas). Still, by trying to make a tighter case than can really be made, they have opened up their own credibility gap. . . .

Robert M. van Deusen
Cedar Rapids, Iowa

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Penn Kemble and Josh Muravchik write:

To Peter Connolly: Our objection to a national primary is rooted in the conviction that political parties are an essential element of democracy. Parties facilitate the congealing of interest groups and bargaining and interaction among groups with similar or compatible interests. They provide a framework which facilitates national debate and they provide a guide for the individual voter, who may not know, or feel he can know, the merits of each candidate in every election. They make possible the representation of the rank-and-file voter in the day-to-day political functions in which he cannot conceivably participate.

A national primary would go far toward emasculating the parties, reducing them to mere nominating vehicles. This was precisely one of our objections to the McGovern rules. A national primary takes the decisions out of the hands of grassroots leadership which has (of course with unfortunate exceptions) an authentic and sustained relationship with the rank and file, and places the decisions where they are maximally subject to the influence of large contributors and clever media manipulators, and the impact of momentary events.

The soundest method of Presidential nomination, in our view, is one resting heavily on ongoing, representative party structure. The rules which will be devised for 1976 will, we hope, be geared to democratizing party structure, not abolishing it.

To Robert M. van Deusen: Chairman O’Brien’s two procedural rulings relating to the vote on the California challenge had a decisive impact on the outcome of the convention. In both cases O’Brien ruled in favor of the McGovern camp.

Arguments based on “fairness” can be (and were) mustered on both sides of those questions. But, on a basis of strict “legality,” the cases made by the anti-McGovern forces were the more compelling. On the question of whether a majority of the number of delegates or a majority of those eligible to vote should have been required on the challenge, the temporary rules of the convention were clear. They read in part: “Except as otherwise provided in these rules, all questions . . . shall be determined by a majority vote of the delegates to the convention.” Nowhere in the rules was it “otherwise provided” that on credentials challenges only a majority of those eligible to vote was required.

On the question of the eligibility of 120 California McGovern delegates to vote on the challenge, it is not we who fail to present the facts, but Mr. van Deusen who fails to understand them. (The footnote in the article to which this discussion refers wrongly uses the figure 151, which represented the number of votes McGovern stood to lose. At dispute in the procedural ruling was the status of the other 120 seats to which California was entitled—the minimum number to which McGovern would have been entitled regardless of the outcome of the challenge.) The challenge was drawn, and upheld by the Credentials Committee, as a challenge to the entire California delegation, not, as in the case of other states, a challenge only to a specific segment of the delegation.

Even if the McGovernites believe that they had the stronger case from the point of view of plain “fairness,” it is hard to see how they can argue that “fairness” should have had precedence over “legality” in determining the procedures for the vote on the California challenge. It was they, after all, who stridently asserted in regard to the substance of that challenge that even though the winner-take-all rule was unfair, they should still get all the delegates because the “rules of the game” had to be upheld.

We are not interested in entering into a debate over whether the principle of fairness or of legality ought to have been decisive, only in pointing out that these decisions merited serious discussion. The point of interest is that at the convention described by the reformers as the true instrument of the party’s rank and file, the decisions which determined the outcome were made by the party chairman alone.

As for Kentucky, Mr. van Deusen seems simply to misunderstand the point. The Kentucky Democratic party did, as he states, adopt a 15-per-cent rule which required proportional representation. We pointed out, however, that it did so because its leaders had been wrongly informed by McGovern-commission staffers that the McGovern rules required the state party to adopt such a system, when in fact the rules only “recommended” it.

Mr. van Deusen’s defense of the Chicago challenge reflects the inability of many reformers to distinguish the definition of democratic procedure from their own electoral success. The McGovern rule under which Daley et al. were unseated forbade any group to submit a slate to the electorate without a pre-announced public slate-making meeting open to everyone. Thus any tightly organized group of even a few score people could effectively deny its opponents access to the ballot by packing every slate-making meeting. Daley’s group was turned out of the convention not because it had sought to keep its opposition oft the ballot, but because it refused to give the opposition the chance to keep it off the ballot! Democratic procedure, it seems to us, requires that, say, Jesse Jackson have the right to enter a slate opposed to Daley’s, not that he have the “right” to be on Daley’s slate.

The Credentials Committee, as Mr. van Deusen could hardly have been unaware, was not “controlled by a coalition of anti-McGovern delegates.” It was, rather, deadlocked by two equally strong factions, with a bare handful of swing votes in the middle. That was why the anti-McGovern bloc could win narrowly on the California challenge, while the McGovern bloc was victorious on the Chicago, Georgia, and down-state Illinois challenges. It also explains why the McGovernites made out fairly well in the wholesale trading of challenges which took place behind the scenes. For example, the McGovern camp withdrew support from the Connecticut challenge—which had clear merit in relation to the guidelines, but wasn’t likely to increase McGovern’s vote total—in return for withdrawal of an anti-McGovern challenge from Indiana, which would have cost McGovern a few votes.

This trading bears on Mr. van Deusen’s question about why the McGovern slates generally went unchallenged. The ironic fact is that the “bosses,” although perhaps reluctantly, took the reforms seriously and at face value; the McGovernites never did. To them they were tools for factional maneuver. The regulars labored under the illusion that the reformers were really interested only in “reform” and could be mollified by good-faith efforts at compliance which, although mildly irritating, would then free the traditional party leadership to proceed with its business. The main concern of the “regulars” has always been winning elections. They were not anxious to see a plethora of challenges and disputes which would (and did) turn the convention into a self-defeating spectacle. They didn’t realize until it was too late (the California challenge was a last-minute effort) what the McGovernites knew from the outset: that under “reform” rules, the name of the game was credentials.

Finally, the Iowa farmers. There were 46 delegates from Iowa. Our own pre-convention survey turned up no farmers among them. The CBS News survey taken at the convention confirms Mr. van Deusen’s claim that delegate Burke listed his occupation as farmer. It does not list George Leonard as having been a delegate at all, but rather as having been an alternate.

Thus it seems we were off by one, and were possibly even off by two, in our figures. But their meaning is still the same. Despite all the claims to representativeness, despite the quotas for women, blacks, and youth, the 1972 Democratic convention was wildly unrepresentative of the Democratic constituency. Workers were underrepresented from industrial states and farmers were underrepresented from the farm states. The debate on how accurately the 1972 convention reflected the American electorate ended, in our view, on Election Day, when Iowa, like the rest of the nation, fell squarely in the anti-McGovern column.

One final note of correction: Robert Nelson was identified in the article as administrative assistant to Eugene McCarthy when he actually was administrative assistant to McGovern.