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That is the heart of Russell's candidacy —the latent threat of revolt used as a bargaining lever on the party. It explains why Dick Russell, a modest and sensible man, and one of the Senate's best, is going through the torture of campaigning for an office he hasn't a chance in a thousand to get. His campaign will make no sense to those who regard politics as a series of popularity contests or Gallup polls on the issues of the day. But in terms of American politics as it is and always has been, Russell is fulfilling an important role as the mobilizer of what Calhoun called "the negative power."
Majorities & Minorities. The American genius for practical politics is older and probably more important than the American genius for producing things. It was partly inherited from Britain, and increased during the process of deliberately creating a new nation by proclamation, negotiation and contract—a very odd way for a nation to come into being.
The Founders were painfully aware of the necessity of carrying with them more than a majority. All 13 states and every large interest had to be placated and reassured. This necessity found many expressions in the Constitution, and even more in the political life that developed under the Constitution. As in other democracies, however, the majority was sometimes tempted to override minorities. U.S. minorities, like others, reacted against this "tyranny of the majority," but in the U.S., the drive to restrain the majority took an odd form. Calhoun, opposing the Jacksonian majority in his own party, and sensing that the slaveholding interest was bound to become a minority without hope of victory, articulated the doctrine of "the concurrent majority." He meant that every essential group in the nation had a veto on policies directly affecting it. Thus policy could only be formed, as the Constitution was formed, by negotiation and compromise.
Calhoun tried to express this principle as a constitutional right of a state to nullify federal laws. He was beaten, and the Civil War established the constitutional supremacy of the national will (majority rule), subject only to the explicit safeguards of the Constitution.
Wide Embrace. But Calhounism survived in a far more subtle and resilient form than legal nullification. It was built into the structure of the American party system. All Europeans and many Americans are bewildered by the tendency of American parties to imitate each other as closely as possible. There are differences between them, but these tend to fade in the heat of the competition of both parties for all important groups of voters. There are no group interests so far apart that an American party will not try to enclose them in its embrace.