The Politics of a Party Faction: The Liberal-Labor Alliance in the Democratic Party, 1948–1972

1. Intraparty factions at the state level have been an object of study since Key’s, V. O.Southern Politics in State and Nation (New York, 1949). For example, Sindler, Allan P., “Bifactional Rivalry as an Alternative to Two-Party Competition in Louisiana,” American Political Science Review 49, no. 3 (September 1955): 641–62. At the national level, Howard L. Reiter has done some of the only systematic work on national factions by focusing on presidential nominating conventions. See his “Creating a Bifactional Structure: The Democrats in the 1940s,” Political Science Quarterly 116, no. 1 (Spring 2001); “Party Factionalism: National Conventions in the New Era,” American Politics Quarterly 8, no. 2 (July 1980); “Why Did the Whigs Die (And Why Didn’t the Democrats)? Evidence from National Nominating Conventions,” Studies in American Political Development 10, no. 2 (Fall 1996); “The Bases of Progressivism Within the Major Parties: Evidence from the National Conventions,” Social Science History 22, no. 2 (Spring 1998); Reiter, “Factional Persistence Within Parties in the United States,” Party Politics 10, no. 3 (May 2004): 251–74. Nicol C. Rae has studied both the southern Democrats and the liberal Republicans; and Kenneth S. Baer has analyzed the New Democrats as an intraparty faction. Rae, , The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans (Cambridge, 1989); Rae, , Southern Democrats (Cambridge, 1994); Baer, , Reinventing Democrats: The Politics of Liberalism from Reagan to Clinton (Lawrence, Kans., 2000). For a historical work that treats factions in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, see Goldman, Ralph M., The National Party Chairmen and Committees: Factionalism at the Top (Armonk, N.Y., 1990).

2. Gerring, John, Party Ideologies in America, 1828–1996 (New York, 1998), 24. Emphasis in original.

3. I have adopted the name “Liberal-Labor Democrats” for the sake of simplicity and clarity of expression, despite the fact that affiliates did not use this name. Contemporaries called this group a variety of names, including “bomb-throwers.” Historian Julian Zelizer has called them the “Liberal Coalition.” Political scientist James Sundquist called them “activists.” Most journalists rely on the simple but confusing shorthand, “liberals.”

4. For studies of these units taking something of a factional approach, see Rieter, “Creating a Bifactional Structure”; Rae, , Southern Democrats; DiSalvo, Daniel, “Party Factions in Congress,” Congress & the Presidency 37, no. 3 (Spring 2009); Wilson, James Q., “New Politics, New Elites, Old Publics,” in The New Politics of Public Policy, ed. Landy, Marc K. and Levin, Martin A. (Baltimore, 1995), 249–67; Rae, , The Decline and Fall of the Liberal Republicans; Critchlow, Donald, The Conservative Ascendancy: How the GOP Right Made Political History (Cambridge, Mass., 2007); Nash, George, The Conservative Intellectual Movement, 2nd ed. (Wilmington, 2006).

5. My hope is not to define factions once and for all (an impossible task), but to provoke further investigation of the subject. I believe that the definition of faction I offer here meets the important methodological criteria of coherence, resonance, operationalization, and analytic utility. See Gerring, John, Social Science Methodology: A Critical Framework (Cambridge, 2001).

6. Hume, David, “Of Parties in General,” in David Hume, Essays: Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Miller, Eugene F., rev. ed. (Indianapolis, 1985), 55.

7. Rossiter, Clinton, ed., The Federalist Papers, intro. Kesler, Charles (New York, 1999), 45.

8. In The Federalist, Madison defines a faction as a “number of citizens … who are united and actuated by some common impulse of passion, or of interest, adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community.” Lasswell writes, Harold D., “A faction seems to subordinate the public good to private gain,” in Lasswell, “Factions,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 6:51, 51; Hofstadter, Richard, The Idea of a Party System (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1969), 9–22; Sartori, Giovanni, Parties and Party Systems: A Framework for Analysis, vol. 1 (New York, 1976), 4–9; Rosanvallon, Pierre, “Factions et partis,” in Dictionnaire de philosophie politique, ed. Raynaud, Philippe and Rials, Stéphane (Paris, 1996), 449–53.

9. Huntington, Samuel P., Political Order in Changing Societies (New Haven, 1968); Belloni, and Beller, , Faction Politics; Chambers, William N., Political Parties in a New Nation, 1776–1806 (New York, 1962).

10. For a further discussion of terminological issues, see Rose, Richard, “Parties, Factions, and Tendencies in Britain,” Political Studies 12 (February 1964): 33–46.

11. Hine, David, “Factionalism in Western European Parties: A Framework for Analysis,” West European Politics 5, no. 1 (1982); Nicholas, Richard W., “Factions: A Comparative Analysis,” in Friends, Followers, and Factions, ed. Schmidt, S. W. (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1977); Zariski, Raphael, “Party Factions and Comparative Politics: Some Preliminary Observations,” Midwest Journal of Political Science 4, no. 1 (February 1960): 27–51; Nicholson, Norman K., “The Factional Model and the Study of Politics,” Comparative Political Studies 5, no. 3 (October 1972): 291–314.

12. DiSalvo, “Party Factions in Congress.”

13. Downs, Anthony, An Economic Theory of Democracy (New York, 1957).

14. Converse, Philip, “The Nature of Belief Systems in Mass Publics,” in Ideology and Discontent, ed. Apter, David (New York, 1964); Lewis-Beck, Michael et al. , The American Voter Revisited (Ann Arbor, 2008); Zaller, John, The Nature and Origins of Mass Opinion (New York, 1992).

15. Bartels, Larry M., Unequal Democracy: The Political Economy of the New Gilded Age (Princeton, 2008), 287.

16. Zaller, John et al. , The Party Decides: Presidential Nominations Before and After Reform (Chicago, 2008); Poole, Keith and Rosenthal, Howard, “U.S. Presidential Elections, 1968–1980: A Spatial Analysis,” American Journal of Political Science 28, no. 2 (February 1984): 283–312.

17. Bartels, , Unequal Democracy, 198.

18. Cited in “Republicans Regard Negro Vote as Important,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 23 January 1959, 117.

19. Quoted in Solberg, Carl, Hubert Humphrey: A Biography (New York, 2003), 170.

20. Butler cited in Baker, Russell, “Butler Declares Rights Is ‘60 Issue: Says Democratic Party Can Win Presidency Only If It Takes Strong Stand,” New York Times, 8 November 1958, 11.

21. Greenstone, , Labor in American Politics, 246. He points out that the alliance of labor and part of the Democratic Party “pose[s] substantial difficulties if we were to apply the widely accepted distinction between American parties and pressure groups … [because] organized labor and the Democratic Party do not conform to the usual party-pressure group distinction.”

22. In 1965, this alliance took on an even more formal character with the Citizens Crusade Against Poverty (CCAP), which united 125 liberal organizations and was chaired by Walter Reuther. Loftus, Joseph A., “Civic Heads Unite to Fight Poverty,” New York Times, 7 November 1965.

23. In 1935, Congress passed the National Labor Relations Act (or Wagner Act), which expanded the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) power to prevent unfair management practices. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 buttressed these provisions. See Forbath, William, Law and the Shaping of the American Labor Movement (Cambridge, Mass., 1991); Kennedy, David M., Freedom from Fear: The American People in Depression and War, 1929–1945 (New York, 2001).

24. Plotke, David, Building a Democratic Political Order: Reshaping Liberalism in the 1930s and 1940s (Cambridge, 1996), 247.

25. Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 20 July 1956.

26. Mayhew, David, Party Loyalty Among Congressmen: The Difference Between Republicans and Democrats, 1947–1962 (Cambridge, Mass., 1966), 94–95.

27. Shafer, Byron E., The Two Majorities and The Puzzle of Modern American Politics (Lawrence, Kans., 2003), 132–43; Lichtenstein, Nelson, “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era,” in The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, ed. Fraser, Steve and Gerstle, Gary (Princeton, 1989); Boyle, Kevin, The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968 (Ithaca, 1995); Bernstein, Irving, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933–1941 (Boston, 1971); Goldfield, Michael, “Worker Insurgency, Radical Organization, and New Deal Labor Legislation,” American Political Science Review 83 (September 1989): 1257–82.

28. Reiter, “Creating a Bifactional Structure”; Sinclair, Barbara, Congressional Realignment, 1932–1978 (Austin, 1982); Katznelson, Ira, Geiger, Kim, and Kryder, Daniel, “Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in Congress, 1933–1950,” Political Science Quarterly 108 (Summer 1993): 296–97; Katznelson, Ira, When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-Century America (New York, 2005); Farhang, Sean and Katznelson, Ira, “The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New and Fair Deals,” Studies in American Political Development 19 (2005): 1–30; Lieberman, Robert C., Shifting the Color Line: Race and the American Welfare State (Cambridge, Mass., 1998); Brown, Michael K., Race, Money, and the American Welfare State (Ithaca, 1999); Dixon, Marc, “Limiting Labor: Business Political Mobilization and Union Setback in the United States,” Journal of Policy History 19, no. 3 (2007): 313–39.

29. On the relationship of FDR to southern Democrats, see Milkis, Sidney M., The President and the Parties: The Transformation of the Party System Since the New Deal (New York, 1993), 83–92.

30. Lissner, Will, “100 Groups Fight Red Infiltration,” New York Times, 28 March 1954; Raskin, A. S., “Meany Sees Shift in Foreign Policy,” New York Times, 20 July 1954.

31. Joseph Rauh, Oral History Interview with Neil M. Johnson, 21 June 1989, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, Mo.

32. Morton Blum, John, V was for Victory: Politics and American Culture During World War II (New York, 1977), 182–220; Layton, Azza Salama, International Politics and Civil Rights Policies in the United States, 1941–1960 (Cambridge, 2000); Bowles, Chester, “The Negro—Progress and Challenge,” New York Times Magazine, 7 February 1954.

33. “Back to Jim Crow,” The New Republic, 16 February 1942, 221. See also Kellogg, Peter J., “Civil Rights Consciousness in the 1940s,” Historian 42 (November 1979).

34. Jonas, Gilbert, Freedom’s Sword: The NAACP and the Struggle Against Racism, 1909–1969 (New York, 2007).

35. Gillon, Steven M., Politics and Vision: The ADA and American Liberalism, 1947–1985 (New York, 1987), 41; Brock, Clifton, Americans for Democratic Action: Its Role in National Politics (Washington, D.C., 1962); Dubofsky, Melvyn, ed., American Labor Leaders (Urbana-Champaign, 1987); Korstad, Robert and Lichtenstein, Nelson, “Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early Civil Rights Movement,” Journal of American History 75, no. 3 (December 1988): 786.

36. Wilkins, Roy, Standing Fast: The Autobiography of Roy Wilkins, intro. Julian Bond (New York, 1994), 290–22.

37. Quoted in “Meany Deplores Washington Bias,” New York Times, 3 December 1952, 44.

38. Raskin, A. H., “A.F.L Bids U.S. Aid Schools in South,” New York Times, 19 May 1954.

39. Rustin, Baynard, “The Blacks and the Unions,” Harpers, May 1971.

40. Frymer, Paul, Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton, 2008); Gould, William, Black Workers in White Unions: Job Discrimination in the United States (Ithaca, 1977); Sugrue, Thomas J., “Affirmative Action from Below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1946–1969,” Journal of American History 91, no. 1 (2004); Arnesen, Eric, “Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History,” Reviews in American History 26 (March 1998).

41. Brown, , Race Money, and the American Welfare State, 161–64.

42. Joseph Rauh, Oral History Interview with Neil M. Johnson, 21 June 1989, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, Independence, Mo.

43. Zelizer, Julian E., On Capitol Hill: The Struggle to Reform Congress and Its Consequences, 1948–2000 (New York, 2006), 35, 40.

44. Draper, Alan, A Rope of Sand: The AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education, 1955–1967 (New York, 1989).

45. Greenstone, , Labor in American Politics, 355.

46. “Labor Prepares for November Elections,” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 28 March 1958.

47. Office of the U.S. Senate, http://www.senate.gov/pagelayout/history/one_item_and_teasers/partydiv.htm (accessed 27 April 2009).

48. Guide to U.S. Elections (Washington, D.C., 1975), 447–880; Congressional Elections, 1946–1996 (Washington, D.C., 1998).

49. Leo Troy, “Distribution of Union Membership Among the States, 1939 and 1953,” Occasional Paper no. 56 (New York, 1975), 2.

50. “Does Labor Backing Help?” Congressional Quarterly Weekly Report, 23 May 1958, 669.

51. Solberg, , Hubert Humphrey, 141.

52. Dubofsky, Melvin and Van Tine, Norman, Labor Leaders in America (Chicago, 1979), 336; Andrew Biemiller, recorded interview by Howard Gamser, 11 March 1965, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

53. Dark, , Unions and the Democrats, 56.

54. Loftus, Joseph A., “Kennedy Appeals for Jobless Bill,” New York Times, 13 March 1962.

55. Ranzal, Edward, “Meany Charges Civil Rights Blot: Eisenhower Efforts Failing He Tells Urban League—Pledges Political Fight,” New York Times, 7 September 1955, 16; Raskin, A. S., “Union Commission to Fight Race Bias: Top Officers to Lead Drive,” New York Times, 15 May 1956.

56. For these and other early steps in the development of what became the DSG, see Kofmehl, Kenneth, “The Institutionalization of a Voting Bloc,” Western Political Quarterly 17 (June 1964): 256–72.

57. Zelizer, , On Capitol Hill, 53.

58. Ferber, Mark F., “The Formation of the Democratic Study Group,” in Congressional Behavior, ed. Polsby, Nelson (New York, 1971); Sundquist, James L., Politics and Policy: The Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson Years (Washington, D.C., 1968), 403–5.

59. Arthur G. Stevens and his collaborators have shown that the DSG communications network had an effect on the roll call voting of its members. When the organization made a concerted get-out-the-vote effort, there was increased turnout of DSG members. The voting behavior of members also moved to the left, away from southern Democrats and non-DSG members. Stevens, Arthur G. et al. , “Mobilization of Liberal Strength in the House, 1955–1970: The Democratic Study Group,” American Political Science Review 68 (June 1974): 667–81. In interviews with members, Stevens and his associates found that the network was best conceived as a set of concentric circles, with a large number of hardcore members at the center expanding out to members who simply received the group’s policy chapters. The core group expanded and became more cohesive from the 84th to the 91st Congresses.

60. Sundquist, , Politics and Policy, 396–402.

61. Foley, Michael, The New Senate: Liberal Influence on a Conservative Institution, 1959–1972 (New Haven, 1980), 186–92; Rourke, Francis E., “The Department of Labor and the Trade Unions,” Western Political Quarterly 7, no. 4 (December 1954).

62. Foley, , New Senate, 118–69.

63. Sundquist, , Politics and Policy, 393.

64. Zelizer, , On Capitol Hill, 35, 42–53.

65. Orren, Karen, “Union Politics and Postwar Liberalism in the United States, 1946–1979,” Studies in American Political Development 1 (1986): 219–28.

66. For example, the 1964 platform declared: “The expansion of the American economy … will require continuation of flexible and innovative fiscal, monetary, and debt management policies, recognizing the importance of low interest rates.” See Gerring, , Party Ideologies in America, 232–53.

67. For a discussion of the idea of a theory of governance, see Ceaser, James W., “The Theory of Governance of the Reagan Administration,” in The Reagan Presidency and the Governing of America, ed. Salamon, Lester and Lund, Michael S. (Washington, D.C., 1984).

68. Sundquist, James L., The Decline and Resurgence of Congress (Washington, D.C., 1981), 155–62.

69. Ibid., 179; Farang and Katznelson, “Southern Imposition”; Katznelson, , When Affirmative Action Was White, 29–50.

70. The reform program for strengthening Congress and the idea of responsible party government came from four sources: Schattschneider, E. E., Party Government (New York, 1942); Heller, Robert, Strengthening Congress (Washington, D.C., 1945), 30–31; Galloway, George, The Reorganization of Congress: A Report to the Committee on Congress of the American Political Science Association (New York, 1945), 34, 37, 80; and APSA Report, “Toward a More Responsible Two-Party System: A Report of the Committee on Political Parties,” American Political Science Review 44, no. 3 (1950).

71. Forcing measures to a vote in the Congress, usually in the Senate, was one way to establish them as party measures. Another way, when measures could not be brought to a vote, was for the DAC to endorse them, stamping them with official party authority. For a detailed account of this process, see Sundquist, , Politics and Policy, 410–15.

72. Ibid., 415.

73. Butler quoted in Congressional Quarterly, 24 October 1958, 1364. See also “Notable Change Seen in Butler Leadership,” Congressional Quarterly, 5 December 1958, 1497–99.

74. AFL-CIO, News Release, 6 January1964, “88th Congress” folder, AFL-CIO Library. Also cited in Dark, , Unions and the Democratic Party, 57.

75. Ware, Alan, The Democratic Party Heads North, 1877–1962 (New York, 2006).

76. Hubert Humphrey to Mike Mansfield, 3 December 1956, Mike Mansfield Papers, Series XVIII, Box 25, File 3. Cited in Zelizer, , On Capitol Hill, 43.

77. Cox, Gary W. and McCubbins, Matthew D., Legislative Leviathan: Party Government in the House (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1993); Cox, and McCubbins, , Setting the Agenda: Responsible Party Government in the U.S. House (New York, 2005).

78. Katznelson et al., “Limiting Liberalism”; Katznelson, , When Affirmative Action Was White, 29–50, 53–79; Farhang and Katznelson, “The Southern Imposition: Congress and Labor in the New and Fair Deals”; Brown, , Race Money, and the American Welfare State, 102–34, 140–64; Schickler, Eric, Disjointed Pluralism: Institutional Innovation and the Development of the U.S. Congress (Princeton, 2001), 164.

79. Polsby, Nelson, How Congress Evolves: The Social Bases of Institutional Change (New York, 2004), 20–36.

80. Zelizer, , On Capitol Hill, 56–60.

81. Wilson, Graham K., Unions in American National Politics (New York, 1979), 17–31.

82. Greenstone, , Labor in American Politics, 70.

83. It was able to do this because the sheer number of American union officials was much more numerous compared to other countries. See Shafer, , Two Majorities, 132–43.

84. White, Theodore H., The Making of the President 1964 (New York, 1969), 327. Other labor leaders, including Walter Reuther and David Dubinsky, also urged Johnson to name Humphrey.

85. Dark, , Unions and the Democrats, 76–83. For a description of the decentralized properties of conventions, see Wildavsky, Aaron, “What Can I Do? The Ohio Delegate’s View of the Convention,” in Revolt Against the Masses and Other Essays on Politics and Public Policy (New York, 1971), 225–45.

86. Eleanor Roosevelt, “My Day,” 13 May 1960, Eleanor Roosevelt Papers, George Washington University. http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/mep/displaydoc.cfm?docid=jfk31 (accessed 21 April 2009).

87. Joseph Rauh, Oral History Interview with Neil M. Johnson, 21 June 1989, Harry S. Truman Library and Museum.

88. For polling data on matchups between the Democratic contenders and Nixon, see Gallup, George H., The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion, 1935–1971, vol. 3 (New York, 1972).

89. Special report, “Meany Makes Visit to Top Three Aspirants,” New York Times, 9 July 1960.

90. Andrew Biemiller, recorded interview by Sheldon Stern, 24 May 1979, John F. Kennedy Library Oral History Program.

91. The activities of David McDonald of the U.S. Steelworkers of America at the 1960 convention are indicative of the way organized labor leaders operated in Democratic nominating politics. McDonald coordinated labor and party personnel in the hotels around the convention, where crucial deals were made, and supervised a network of political operatives deployed on the convention floor. He put “heavy pressure” on the leaders of uncommitted state delegations. See Dark, , Unions and the Democrats, 92. Reuther and Meany operated in the same fashion at the convention, covertly supporting Kennedy among party leaders. Lichtenstein, , Most Dangerous Man in Detroit; Goulden, Joseph, Meany (New York, 1972), 187.

92. Joseph Rauh, Oral History Interview, Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, 8 August 1969.

93. George Meany to President Lyndon Johnson, 29 December 1967, Legislative Reference Files, George Meany Memorial Archives, Silver Spring, Md.

94. Broder, David, “COPE Director Al Barkan Flexing Labor’s Big Muscle,” Washington Post, 7 May 1968; see also Broder, , “Election of 1968,” in The History of American Presidential Elections, 1789–1968, ed. Schlesinger, Arthur Jr. (New York, 1972), 3705–52.

95. Dark, , Unions and the Democrats, 74–75.

96. Orren, Karen and Skowronek, Stephen, The Search for American Political Development (New York, 2004).