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In domestic affairs, the increasing hostility between labor unions and the blacks made liberals, who long supported both as underdogs, even more insecure. Social and cultural issues like drugs, amnesty and abortion, which shook the country in the '60s, split the bread-and-butter liberals from the counterculturists of the McCarthy- McGovern era. The divisions still are there.
The liberal label has always been ambiguous. When Democratic National Committee Chairman Robert Strauss is asked whether he is a liberal, he answers with a question: On what issue? The answer can be measured, public opinion experts believe, by putting people to a test. If you agree with at least five of the following six questions, you are entitled to consider yourself a present-day liberal: 1) It is more important to create jobs than to balance the budget; 2) Too little attention is being paid to the needs of minority groups; 3) The defense budget should be decreased; 4) Forced busing should be continued; 5) There should be no censorship of pornography for adults; and 6) The death penalty should not be reinstated.
The test is far from conclusive. Says Congressman Don Eraser, head of the Americans for Democratic Action: "We're more realistic now. We want someone who can win rather than simply pass a liberal litmus test. We learned that lesson."
Still, liberals are an amorphous, leaderless fraternity in this year's nominating process. "Almost every day," says Historian Richard Wade of the City University of New York and a former McGovern strategist, "liberals call me and say: 'What shall I do? Who shall I be for?' They don't want to work for any of the candidates."
Dangerous Man. Issues aside, the liberal community would come alive in a second, say members of the left, if Ted Kennedy were to snap his fingers. Says Joe Rauh, former head of A.D.A.: "People keep forgetting we have our second team on the field. I'm for Mo Udall, and so are many others, but it's a nothing-else-to-do kind of thing."
Liberals almost uniformly speak of Udall as not being forceful enough; they like him as a man but not as a leader. He has not been able to collect key Democratic groups—blacks, organized labor, Jews. His main source of support—the intellectuals—is a slim constituency. He warns liberals that if they sit on their wallets waiting for a brokered convention, they'll be stuck with a conservative nominee—Scoop Jackson or Jimmy Carter. So far they have not paid much attention.
The liberals, nonetheless, are nearly apoplectic about Jackson. They describe him as a dangerous man—despite his almost perfect A.D.A. record on domestic issues—because of his reservations about détente and his hawkish stands on national defense. Historian Arthur Schlesinger, for example, contends that if Jackson becomes President, the Brezhnev regime might fall, so wholly is it committed to détente. Jackson also fails the social-cultural test; liberals see him as a paralyzing square. "If people think liberals sat on their hands with Humphrey in 1968," predicts Alan Baron, a top McGovern aide, "they'll abandon Jackson in droves." Says Anne Wexler, associate publisher of Rolling Stone: "Jackson's the best issue we have. He drives us together."