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It was Mario Cuomo who gave eloquence to a new party that he defined as a blending of the seed of pioneers and immigrants. Where once candidates boasted of the log cabin, Cuomo described the immigrants' struggle: "I saw it and lived it... I watched a small man with thick calluses on both hands work 15 and 16 hours a day. I saw him once literally bleed from the bottoms of his feet, a man who came here uneducated, alone, unable to speak the language ... I learned about our kind of democracy from my father . . . and from my mother . . . And that they were able to build a family and live in dignity and see one of their children go from behind their little grocery store ... to occupy the highest seat in the greatest state of the greatest nation in the only world we know, is an ineffably beautiful tribute to the democratic process." Cuomo would probably run some day for national office, but if his time came, he would run as an American of new traditions in a nation whose heritage was changing.
That heritage had changed long before 1984. The census of 1980, whose mountainous statistics were not fully analyzed until 1983, gave us the first reliable ethnic sifting of the new America. Of the 226 million citizens willing to report their lineage, old-stock Americans now totaled less than half. A good number could still trace their ancestors to colonial times, including many of British stock (now only 62 million Americans) and Dutch (only 6.3 million). Add to them 49 million Americans of German stock and 40 million of Irish stock, and still there were only 157 million Americans who might claim pre-Civil War ancestry. Add to these the later comers: Scandinavians, Slavs, Italians, Jews, Canadian French; add further 22 million blacks only recently admitted to full citizenship; add further 13 million Hispanics and 3.4 million Asian newcomers—and one had the texture of a nation unlike any before and unlike America even half a century ago.
By 1984 "ethnics" were prize pieces in the game of politics. Republicans were now targeting the loyalties of heritage groups that for decades had voted Democratic. No Republican candidate, except possibly Richard Nixon, has had a keener sensitivity to ethnic politics than Ronald Reagan. If the Democrats would open their convention with Mario Cuomo, Reagan would counter with a keynoter of Hispanic origin, Katherine Davalos Ortega, Treasurer of the U.S., who closed her address with "Dios bendiga a America."
The story of the contest for ethnics can be made romantic. What cannot be made thrilling is the public cowardice shown by both parties' candidates. Not until the last "debate" in October were they finally forced to confront the problem of new immigration, which is changing our country again. Both waffled. Neither would offer leadership to a nation that saw its borders overrun by illegals, by people of alien cultures and tongues, a nation groping for new laws that at once protect its borders while guarding its tradition of refuge.
Congress, to its credit, did debate a Simpson-Mazzoli immigration bill for a full seven days, a soul-searching week torn by anguish, hope and fear. But, in the end, all effort to pass the bill crumbled under the pressure of the Hispanic lobby. Its fate was a classic example of political