Nomination May Be Far Off, but Blacks Now Have a Lock on Democratic Party

Readers of the weekly humor and opinion magazines of the 19th Century encountered a familiar figure in editorial cartoons that poked fun at the Democrats. He was a squat little fellow with a pug nose, a derby hat perched jauntily on his head and a clay pipe sticking out of his mouth at a rakish angle. He was the Irish-American immigrant and to Americans of the Victorian era came very near to symbolizing the Democratic Party.

While broad ethnic stereotypes are no longer a staple of cartoonists, someone wanting to portray the modal Democratic supporter could accurately use the black voter. Stalwart and cohesive, blacks in the electorate now occupy dominant positions in the Democratic ranks once enjoyed by the Irish immigrants. But what makes their role even more decisive is the presence of a single figure around which they can rally: Jesse Jackson.

The conventional wisdom that emerged from the Democratic gathering in Atlanta was that Michael Dukakis had turned back firmly the Jackson challenge for party leadership and emerged triumphant. He was seen to have been steadfast in his opposition to the minority planks on taxation, nuclear weapons and a Palestinian state. His concessions to the Jackson forces have been interpreted as being of largely symbolic value.

But no one who watched or attended the convention could doubt the importance of those very symbolic acts of deference to Jackson and the hard political realities that lay behind them. Black voters, long an important element in the Democratic electorate, have gained with Jesse Jackson an influence in the party that would be the envy of the crustiest New York Irish politician of the 19th Century. But if history is any guide, it may be a long time before someone emerges from the black community to capture the party’s presidential nomination.

Arriving in this country in large numbers in the mid-19th Century after the disastrous potato famine at home, most Irish immigrants found themselves in the large cities of the Eastern seaboard, which were then dominated by the Democrats of old native stock.

By the 1870s the immigrants and their children had assumed the leadership of the local party organizations. On a national level, their votes were sought eagerly by presidential candidates of both parties. But it was not until 1928 that one of their number captured a presidential nomination.

New York Gov. Alfred E. Smith, the Democratic nominee that year, was beloved of his own kinsmen but made many others uncomfortable. Like Jesse Jackson 60 years later, Smith had a distinctive personal idiom. Sporting a brown derby, spats and a flower in his lapel, Smith spoke in a rich West Side dialect that seemed uncultivated to many people west of the Hudson River. But Irish Catholics everywhere flocked to vote for him. Like Jackson, moreover, he activated many citizens who had never cast a ballot. Smith’s problem was one that Jackson would later encounter: high negatives. More people deserted the Smith ticket than were attracted by it, most notably the white Southern Protestants who were the Democrats’ other mainstay. Smith went down to defeat in 1928 and with him went the hope that a Catholic could ever again be the presidential nominee of a major party.

There was, however, a payoff for the Irish Catholic voters for their fidelity: a lock on the chairmanship of the Democratic National Committee. A succession of party heads with names such as Farley, Hannegan, Butler and O’Brien was the consolation prize for the party’s most loyal bloc of voters for whom the real prize was deemed out of reach.

It is one of the great ironies of American politics that at the very time that demographic changes were eroding the loyalty of Irish Catholic voters to the Democrats, one of their own--John F. Kennedy--won the party nomination and the presidency. All the available evidence suggests that the smooth and urbane Kennedy halted temporarily the exodus of this crucial group of voters and that in 1960, at least, more voters were gained than lost by a Catholic on the ticket.

Jesse Jackson’s role in Democratic politics is more comparable to Al Smith’s than to Jack Kennedy’s. He represents to blacks what Smith did to Roman Catholics; to voters outside the ethnic group, however, he encounters the same kind of opposition. In some ways, however, Jackson’s impact on the party has been even greater than Smith’s. He has staked a claim on influence that is without parallel for any figure who was not a President or presidential nominee. While the importance of seats on the executive council of the national committee recently assigned to Jackson supporters should not be exaggerated, it would be difficult for Dukakis to avoid naming a black to succeed Paul Kirk as party chairman when he steps down. That will probably create a precedent in which future DNC chairmen will be black.

Increasingly, the black agenda as defined by Jackson will figure prominently in the platforms of future Democratic presidents and hopefuls. The alternative budget resolutions of the black congressional caucus, which hitherto received little attention, may now be more seriously heeded by party leaders in the House, and the fortunes of Rep. Bill Gray of Pennsylvania in his campaign for the chairmanship of the Democratic caucus have been boosted.

Does all of this point to a presidential nomination in the near future for a black candidate? It does, but that person will not be Jesse Jackson. Like Al Smith, it falls to Jesse Jackson to be a pathfinder, not the claimant. The black Jack Kennedy has yet to emerge and when he does, he is apt to be as much like Jesse Jackson as J.F.K. was like Al Smith.