Links:

    -AUTHOR BLOG: In Front of Your Nose (Mark Stricherz)
    -BOOK SITE: Why the Democrats are Blue (Encounter Books)
    -ARCHIVES: Mark Stricherz (National Review)
    -ESSAY: Primary colors: How a little-known task force helped create Red State/Blue State America (Mark Stricherz, 11/23/2003, Boston Globe)
    -ESSAY: Why I am a Catholic Democrat (Mark Stricherz, 9/12/07, Inside Democrat)
    -ESSAY: Abortion Appeal: Roe has never been popular. (Mark Stricherz, 1/22/08, National Review)
    -ESSAY: Enough to Make a Dem Blue: Bad news for Democrats in Iowa. (Mark Stricherz, 1/03/08, National Review)
    -ESSAY: A Moral Majority: Soccer moms are more anti-abortion than you think (Mark Stricherz, 08/04/2003, Weekly Standard)
    -ESSAY: Bonding with baby: Why Ultrasound is turning women against abortion (Mark Stricherz, 12/02/02, Crisis)
    -ESSAY: Goodbye, Catholics: How One Man Reshaped the Democratic Party (Mark Stricherz , Commonweal)
    -ESSAY: Roberts´s Wife Off-Limits (Mark Stricherz, 9/11/05, National Catholic Register)
    -ESSAY: Marriage at the Polls: Will gay-marriage initiatives give Bush a boost on November 2? (Mark Stricherz 08/30/2004, Weekly Standard)
    -REVIEW: Of Can a Catholic Be a Democrat? How the Party I Loved Became the Enemy of My Religion by David Carlin (Mark Stricherz, Crisis)
    -REVIEW: of Party of Death by Ramesh Ponnuru (Mark Stricherz, NY Sun)
    -INTERVIEW: Interview: how the Democratic Party was hijacked: In an exclusive interview, author Mark Stricherz recounts how the Democratic Party, once supported by Catholics, has been secularized over the last 40 years. (CNA, January 28, 2008, Daily Estimate)
    -INTERVIEW: The Once and Future Democratic Party: A Democratic victory in 2008 is not inevitable, Mark Stricherz argues. (National Review)

Lopez: What was the McGovern Commission and why is it important for the average American and registered Democrats, especially — to know anything about it?

Stricherz: The commission was supposed to democratize the Democratic party's presidential nominating system. Instead of bosses in smoke-filled rooms picking the nominee, voters in ballot booths would do so.

When the commission was approved, at the 1968 convention in Chicago, Democrats recognized that the party had to change. Southern whites, a staple of the New Deal coalition, were leaving the party. But what new coalition would the Democratic Party adopt? Bobby Kennedy offered one answer: a "have-not" or "black-blue" coalition — an electoral alliance that added two new constituencies, young people and blacks, but did not downgrade the interests of two old clients, Catholics and blue-collar workers. Eugene McCarthy offered a different one: alliance that added not only young people and blacks, but also college-educated suburbanites, and marginalized the interests of Catholics and blue-collar workers.

The question wasn't answered by Kennedy or McCarthy. Rather, it was answered by a handful of people on or associated with the 1969-72 McGovern Commission — Fred Dutton, Ken Bode, Eli Segal, Anne Wexler, George McGovern. They sided ultimately with Gene McCarthy, that the party should be formed into what Dutton called a Social Change coalition.

The consequences from the McGovern Commission have been profound. The Democratic Party grew more in harmony with the interests of the New Left rather than the Old Left; college-educated students rather than blue-collar workers; ideological activists rather than ordinary voters.

    -ARCHIVES: "mark stricherz" (Find Articles)
    -REVIEW: of Why the Democrats Are Blue: Secular Liberalism and the Decline of the People's Party by Mark Stricherz (W. James Antle III, American Spectator)
    -REVIEW: of Why the Democrats are Blue (Rick Perlstein, Democracy)