Blame Massachusetts

One week after the corporate press had declared the quadrennial end of ideology in American politics--vide Time and Newsweek's cover stories on Jimmy Carter--Henry M. Jackson won the Massachusetts Democratic primary largely because of ideology. That, and a bit of money, about $400,000, or almost twice the amount spent by second-place finisher and spender Morris Udall.

There was little else available to explain the triumph of colorless Scoop. Meanwhile, his talk of a restoration of The Grand New Deal coalition supporting his candidacy seemed inane, in that Roxbury blacks gave Carter a plurality, professional liberals flocked to Udall and even most Jews made Jackson only their second choice.

But Scoop didn't need all those other groups--he had labor. Blue-collar workers and their families, who make up more than half the vote in every large state, gave him impressive victories almost everywhere: in Lawrence, with a long-time depressed textile and shoe industry, Jackson beat his nearest competitor, Carter, by 3-2; in Springfield, he topped Wallace by the same margin; and Worcester provided Scoop with a nearly 3-1 lead over his nearest rival.

The state's 12-per-cent unemployment rate won for Jackson, demonstrated by The New York Times/CBS poll, which found Scoop's supporters most concerned with beating back corporations and giving federal guarantees for jobs.

Jackson's anti-detente stance and a position on busing a shade to the right of the liberals may have been contributory, but certainly not decisive.

Scoop's working class majority faded in only one area--Boston, where the anti-busing issue gave Wallace an edge. But that small solace blinded most political analysts to the Alabama governor's spectacular failure.

Never before has Wallace thrown so much time and money and demagoguery into an industrial Northern state's primary and come out with a paltry third-place finish at 17 per cent of the vote. In Wisconsin, Indiana and Maryland in 1964--at the beginning of the cycle of violent ghetto summers--he won between 30 and 43 per cent against stand-in candidates for a popular incumbent President. The fightin' judge won Maryland and Michigan in 1972.

Moreover, the hysterical fears latent in the response to busing were counted on by Wallace's strategists to provide a massive public relations victory in this state, the nation's "most liberal," as the governor stressed over and over.

But the blue-collar allegiance to Jackson over Wallace--and the traditional liberal-oriented issues which Jackson voters stressed as reasons for their support--undercut the idea that the primary repudiated a liberal viewpoint.

As for the "progressive" wing of the party, as Udall now likes to call it, the old blues dictum applies: "You may get better but you'll never get well." With Bayh and Shriver all but out of the race, at seventh and sixth place finishes respectively, left field becomes mostly Mo's.

That is indeed a mixed blessing. Udall's support has so far shown itself to be upper-income and highly educated, concerned with ecology (many "Friends of the Earth" are in Cambridge and Newton) and the scarcity of natural resources, but not overly interested in policies appealing to the masses, like jobs and prices. In short, it is the "elite liberal" formula that in another guise--acid, amnesty, abortion--led McGovern down the road to disaster.

About Birch Bayh there is one lesson to be learned: he was another tragic victim--as Stuart Symington was in 1960--of the Edmund Muskie syndrome; acceptable to all, the first and rabid choice of almost none (excepting the Harvard people who worked for him).

Carter has the burnt-out, apolitical refugees of the '60s, Wallace has the frightened, Jackson the blue-collars, and Udall is the professors' choice. Even Harris has the ideologically committed. In primaries, strong interest-group support is key--coalition-building can take place after the nomination.

And in the background, smiling crazily, is the candidate who wouldn't die, Hubert H. Humphrey.