Word: wattenberg
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...attack from the center has taken many forms. Toward the end of the 1970 Congressional elections. Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg, two former Johnson-Humphrey advisors, produced a book entitled The Real Majority. The political center is where it's at, they said, since most Americans are "unyoung, unpoor and unblack." Street crime and the fear of young protestors are the most pressing issues on the minds of American voters in the 1970's, and politicians who fail to realize this will certainly be defeated. LBJ moderate columnists like John Roche and Evans-Novak beat their centrist drums on behalf...
...their book The Real Majority, Richard Scammon and Ben Wattenberg laid claim to this word as a description for the science in which they were engaged. By analyzing various election results and polls, they came to the conclusion that candidates who fell outside of the "political center" would lose elections, and that Democrats (or anyone else) who soft-peddled the law and order issue would certainly lose. They saw a new issue emerging in America, "the social issue," which encompassed the sorts of fears which elected Frank Rizzo in Philadelphia. If the Democrats neutralize the social issue by talking tough...
...Bogue, director of the University of Chicago's Community and Family Study Center, speculates that the U.S. population can be "twice what it is now without much difficulty," and that there will be even less difficulty if "the cities of this country can be greatly decentralized." Ben Wattenberg, a demography expert and former White House staffer, adds: "There is no optimum population as such. Whether we have 250 million people or 350 million people is less important than what the people, however many of them there are, decide to do about their problems...
...some political circles, it has passed for a maxim that the new 18-year-old vote will make little difference. Last year, for example. Political Analysts Ben Wattenberg and Richard Scammon wrote in The Real Majority that the young, if they bother to vote at all, will probably vote along the same lines as their parents...
Scammon and Wattenberg, though, underrate the importance of Vietnam. The issue has cooled, but it remained prominent in many races this year. Senator Gore's opposition to the war along with his support of the Cooper-Church amendment was a major issue in the Tennessee race and lost him votes. Outside the South, primaries and elections particularly for the House affirmed the capacity of candidates running on an anti-war platform to draw major support. The authors' reticence on the war issue may stem from their ties to Johnson and Humphrey. The book itself, no doubt, began as a series...