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as constantly opposing and evading; for them it is convenient to dis–
cover that it is not they who are ambivalent toward defense, but those
others, the Reds or the State Department or the Democrats.
Not all members of the discontented classes come from similar
backgrounds or arrive at similar destinations; nevertheless, mobility
is a general characteristic. They or their parents are likely to have
voted Democratic sometime between 1930 and 1948, and such a
memory makes them more susceptible to ideological appeals, for in
rising above their impoverished or ethnically "un-American" begin–
nings, they have found it "time for a change" in identification: they
would like to rise "above" economic appeals ("don't let them take
it away") to ideological ones-or, in more amiable terms, "above"
self-interest to patriotism. Such people could not be brought in one
move into the Republican party, which would seem too much like
a betrayal of origins, but they could be brought to take a stand
"above party"-and to vote for a non-partisan general whom the
Democrats had also sought. According to a recent study reported by
Professor Malcolm Moos, in two counties outside Boston the self–
declared "independent" voters now outnumber the Republicans and
Democrats combined-a reflection of this roving backfield of discon–
tented classes which has become the most dynamic force in American
political life!
Just as many among the newly prosperous tend at present to re–
ject the traditional party labels (while others seek, perhaps after a
split ticket or two, the protective coloration of the GOP), so they
also reject the traditional cultural and educational leadership of the
enlightened upper and upper-middle classes. They have sent their
children to college as one way of maintaining the family's social and
occupational mobility. Some of these children have become eager
strivers for cosmopolitanism and culture, rejecting the values now
held by the discontented classes. But many of those who have
swamped the colleges have acquired there, and helped their families
4 According to a study of the 1952 election by the Survey R esearch Center
of the University of Michigan, only two groupings in the population were re–
sistent to these appeals and went more strongly Democratic than in 1948: these
were the Negroes on the one extreme of the social spectrum and the college–
educated, upper income, and professional and managerial strata at the other
extreme-the latter also produced more Republican votes, as the result of a
decline in the non-voters. See Angus Campbell, Gerald Gurin, Warren E. Miller,
The Voter Decides
(Row, Peterson and Co., Evanston; 1954), Table 5.1.
