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FREEDOMWAYS              FOURTH QUARTER 1972
This is a significant electoral victory for all the brothers and sisters who labor on the big commercial farms and for the outstanding leadership of Cesar Chavez. 
There are now fourteen women elected to the Congress but no women in the U.S. Senate. Measured against world standards prevailing today this says more about the general political and social backwardness of the United States than it does about the slow progress we are making toward guaranteeing equal rights to women. Nor did these elections produce any significant increases in representation for the Spanish-speaking population in positions of power, although the La Raza Unida Party in Texas made a good showing as an independent force in the gubernatorial elections in that state. 
The net result of these Presidential elections is that the "New Deal" coalition, which for thirty-six years has been the social base of the Democratic Party, is in a state of attrition suffering from major defections by sections of the blue-collar labor vote and middle-class Jewish and Catholic voters who fled into the Nixon camp. The corollary result is that a Republican administration, which can be described as one of borderline fascist character, has been given four more years. 
An analysis of these elections and the causes of some of the results cannot ignore that part of the problem was in the weaknesses of the McGovern for President Campaign itself. At the outset, however, it must be recognized that Senator George McGovern showed great personal courage in putting forward, very clearly, certain of the basic issues confronting the people of our country in these elections. The need to cut the military budget, the need for tax reforms which would require the rich to, as he put it "pay their fair share," his commitment to an immediate cease-fire and a withdrawal of American military from all of Southeast Asia within 90 days of his election, and the issue of full employment were basic issues in the campaign which Senator McGovern and his Vice-presidential running-mate Sargent Shriver were quite articulate in projecting. So the choices given the voters were clear enough. 
Yet the McGovern for President Campaign structure is another thing altogether. The middle-class parochialism, arrogance and amateurishness shown repeatedly by the campaign organization could hardly have been expected to result in producing a victory for its candidate. The basic design of the McGovern campaign strategy, especially after the Miami convention, apparently was to (1) write off the South as unwinnable, (2) take the national black vote for
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