With each new generational thesis some group once thought of as key to victory is left by the wayside.
In the last generation unions played this role. They went from being the foot soldiers of the New Deal to reviled scapegoats for America’s lazy executives.
The good news for 2008 is this role will now be taken by racists, the people idiots like Chris Matthews call "Reagan Democrats" but, in fact, the GOP’s Wallace wing.
So let me tell you a story:
When I was a kid, 40 years ago, on Long Island, I watched this
transformation first-hand.George Wallace was immensely popular in the
Massapequa of 1967. Many people who had grown up as Democrats used
Wallace as a way-station on their journey to the Nixon Thesis.A brief story. One of my close friends in junior high was a refugee.
His parents had moved to the suburbs years earlier, choosing Roosevelt
for its easy access to the city and its clean streets. Then came the
block busters, real estate agents who used the fear of racism to make
big money.The block busters bought a home on their own dime and move a black
family in. Then they told the other neighbors how scary black folks
were, and when those listings came in they sold their homes to blacks
in turn. What happened to property values then was not pretty. My
friend’s parents blamed the blacks, when they should have blamed the
agents.Thus this family came to Massapequa, lily-white Massapequa. They
paid up to get in, taking a smaller house, in a poorer location, than
they thought they deserved. They were perfect fodder for the Wallace
pitch.Those who think of the Massapequa of the 1960s solely in terms of Jerry
Seinfeld, the Baldwin brothers, or Peggy Noonan like to forget this
fact. In 1968 a black family moved into Massapequa, sponsored by
liberal groups, including Benjamin Spock the baby doctor.Someone
burned a cross on their lawn. In Massapequa, on Long Island, in 1968,
the Ku Klux Klan rode.George Wallace was a racist, a forthright one. He was also a
Populist, of the old school, a friend of the working man. He wasn’t an
elitist, a friend of the rich. He was for the little guy. The little
guys of Massapequa took to this message, and after Wallace became what
Matthews calls "Reagan Democrats," filled with bigotry, looking for
scapegoats, ready to be manipulated by the Lee Atwaters and Karl Roves
of the world until they died.
Most of these people have now died, and their kids were stolid Republicans until this decade, when they saw what stolid Republicanism can lead to. The Long Islanders who have died in Iraq came from these people. The Long Islanders losing their homes in the sub-prime mortgage mess did too. The grandchildren of the Wallace Wing now see themeselves as being on the down escalator, poorer than their parents.
They’ve switched, and brought their parents with them. The Wallace Democrats are dead, Chris.
They’re Obama-crats now.
