With the intellectual force of their ideas and their skill in publicizing them, Democratic liberals have in the past dominated the party. But they have often been overzealous and self-destructive. The liberals tore Hubert Humphrey apart in 1968 because of his prolonged support of the Viet Nam War and largely caused his defeat. Their single-minded ferocity inspired George McGovern's disastrous 1972 campaign and split the party. Who are the liberals today? Which candidate do they support in 1976? What is their influence? TIME National Political Correspondent Robert Ajemian surveyed the field and reports:
Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, back at Harvard from his job as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, stretched his long legs down the tavern booth. His two cheeseburgers and draft beer sat untouched in front of him. He was, with characteristic gusto, into his subject. "These goddam elitist liberals," he said, "almost succeeded in running the workingman out of the Democratic Party." He spotted a passing bus through the window and began pumping his finger toward it. "They made that bus driver out there feel illiberal; they turned him into a caricature.
"Liberals make sure to insulate themselves from all these drastic social changes," he went on, "but they expect the masses to make them work. It's so intolerant. In their eyes, if you're not a cultural liberal, then you're not a political liberal." Moynihan himself once had liberal credentials but now is considered something of a renegade.
In Retreat. It is not an easy time to be a liberal. The criticism, like Pat Moynihan's, is fierce. Today liberals are in retreat, or, as Social Scientist Moynihan puts it, fading back into the culture. They are unmoored and fragmented, a variegated group that has traditionally coalesced around a strong leader and a compelling cause—and now has neither. None of the presidential candidates stirs them the way past heroes like Adlai Stevenson or Eugene McCarthy did. No issue even faintly matches the emotion of their stand against the Viet Nam War. On top of that, they are blamed—by fellow Democrats, no less—for the growth of Big Government. In the background, there is the now familiar conviction that liberal remedies have not worked: problems did not get solved simply by "throwing money" at them.
The message of the first five primaries seems to confirm the liberals' plight. All but one of their candidates have dropped out. The survivor around whom they are gathering, Morris Udall, still has not won a primary. Even Udall has poured salt on their wounds: he has taken to dropping their label. Udall prefers to call himself a progressive, a description he says sounds less negative.
In foreign affairs, says Moynihan, there is something almost Orwellian about the transformation of the word liberal to mean the opposite of what it meant a decade or so ago. John Kennedy's inaugural address, which declared that the U.S. would defend freedom around the globe, was celebrated at the time. Now liberals oppose intervention.