The Gut Issues in the Election  

All commentators seem to agree that the recent election was the most clear-cut representation of a party vote in a long time, and that the social composition of party allegiance more closely resembled the Roosevelt era than anything since. In …



The Continuing Democratic Majority  

‘n trying to think about the 1976 election, let’s start with one proposition, even though it is discounted by some political analysts: the majority of voters still maintains a national allegiance to the Democratic party that goes back to the …



A “Return” to Politics in America?  

At first the 1964 election seemed to promise a new politicized atmosphere, but these expectations were hardly fulfilled. The results were less a mandate for a program than an overwhelming rejection of Goldwater madness. Democratic campaign propaganda either appealed to …



The Political Atmosphere  

May I add a word to the discussion begun in the last DISSENT on the political climate in America? Essentially, the 1958 vote continued a trend that began after the Korean War in the summer of 1953. The Polish and …



Why Anxiety?  

Suppose one were to pose the question: why is anxiety so endemic to our current national life? The most likely response would be a supercilious shrug: naturally, anxiety must be the common state of those who have lived through upheaval, …



On McCarthy and the Spectre  

READERS or DISSENT are probably as tired as everyone else of analyses of McCarthy. This note is offered for only one reason—to say a word on the continuing fears of a “McCarthy movement.” A close look at contemporary America discloses …