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THE PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION       EDITORIAL

granted and (3) concentrate almost exclusively on the campus youth, in its attempt to get the youth vote, while failing to make a special appeal to young blue-collar-workers. Any campaign following this strategy, however well intentioned, can be expected to flunk, because it avoids coming to grips with certain political and social realities. At many levels of the campaign decisions were obviously being made by people who had no real convictions concerning a victory for the Democratic Party, but who were just going through the routines of a Presidential Campaign. Nor can we ignore the fact that the old line regular Democratic Party organization whose officials in most states considered themselves the authentic party leadership were only, at best, lukewarm towards the McGovern candidacy when they weren't actively avoiding association with the campaign. The "solid South" in this election went solidly Republican; the first time since 1936 that a presidential candidate carried every southern state. The working class youth voters voted fifty-six percent for Nixon while McGovern carried that percentage of the campus-based youth. The black vote remained overwhelmingly in the Democratic party (eighty-five percent) even though the McGovern campaign organization did not really deal with the issue of racism in America or make any special effort to arouse the black vote to turn out. As a result the percentage of black voters participating in this election was no higher than the national average of fifty-five percent. More than any other section of the voting population the Afro-American community remained solidly committed to the issues of peace, greater democracy in our country and improvements in the general well-being of the population. In the face of defections on all sides from the Democratic constituency the black community maintained a solid eight-five percent support for the McGovern Presidential candidacy. By contrast, the white American majority population in its political behavior in these elections confirmed the moral and spiritual crisis that the United States as a society is in. We cannot avoid the conclusion that a large section of the white population in this country has, over the last twenty-five years, been systematically moved so far to the Right that it could not recognize in George McGovern's campaign the continuation of the "New Deal" Democratic tradition; or upon recognizing it, rejected it. Even before King Richard is sworn in for his second term of office the real meaning of the Republican campaign slogan "Four More

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---------- Reopened for Editing 2024-02-19 16:53:26