A half-time pep rally for the Democrats
When his ratings in the polls were low earlier this year, Jimmy Carter looked at the scheduled Democratic midterm convention with considerable apprehension. He had reluctantly agreed in the heat of the 1976 election battle to organize last week's gathering as a gesture to win support from liberals. Carter had never been much of a party man, and during the campaign had made a point of stressing his independence from the Democratic organization. During his first year in office, he remained an outsider and commanded little respect within party ranks.
But Carter's standing with the public—and partly as a result, with his party—is much improved. When he stepped up to deliver his speech at Cook Convention Center in Memphis, he received a warm welcome from close to 4,000 Democrats. After a blistering attack on the Republicans and the Nixon Administration, Carter said: "We Democrats pledged to have a Government as good as the American people, and that is what we are doing." He added: "Ours is a party of practical dreamers." National Democratic Chairman John White added some effusive words of his own to the party's executive committee: "Jimmy Carter, more than any other President I have known, is a party President."
But beneath the session's cheer, there was an undercurrent of feeling among many Democratic factions that Carter is not really their President. Black leaders have been particularly vocal in their discontent, but it is shared by others: labor, Jews, intellectuals, farmers, urban leaders and old-line machine politicians feel a wariness about the man. Says former Iowa Democratic Chairman Clifton Larson: "There is an acceptance after Camp David that he doesn't screw things up, but there is no support for him. The liberals don't want to be identified with the Carter position—or oppose it." Says Buffalo's Joseph Crangle: "His political activity during the recent campaign helped his Democratic Party credentials, but the jury is still out." Edward Campbell, the current chairman in Iowa, complains that Carter seems unable to inspire the party: "Democrats don't have an anti-Carter fix, but they have no leadership, no direction, no emotion. We ought to be looking for an esprit de corps."
Because of the Democrats' lack of enthusiasm for Carter, his political lieutenants, led by Chairman White and Administration Party Liaison Tim Kraft, tried to turn the miniconvention into an exercise in intraparty public relations, a sort of half-time pep rally. They took pains to prevent the gathering from breaking down into a cacophony of dissent, which is always a possibility when Democrats gather. White rigged the rules in an attempt to minimize debates on resolutions critical of Carter. But on the eve of the convention he made concessions to liberal groups, led by lameduck Minnesota Congressman Don Fraser and UAW President Douglas Fraser, to allow several dissident resolutions to get a full airing on Sunday. The 23 official resolutions that were intended as the convention's centerpiece had been approved a week in advance by the White-picked Committee on Conference Procedure.