Nixon & the Silent Majority

In “Hardhats Versus Elite Doves: Consolidation of the Image,” Penny Lewis asserts that the tension between the elite doves v. reactionary hardhats was more a stereotype than anything. Rather, the distaste of White working-class Americans for the antiwar protesters was not directly tethered to a disapproval of their message. Following the 1968 antiwar protest that turned into a police riot in Chicago, Lewis points out that “in the direct aftermath of the Democratic National Convention, a poll found that even those who opposed the war opposed protesters” (Lewis 164). Lewis also cites a survey conducted following the DNC, “53 percent of those who called for complete withdrawal rated the protesters negatively” (Lewis 164). Rather than being wholly opposed to the antiwar protesters and what they advocated for, the White working class instead felt that they had been taken advantage of (Vietnam) and forgotten about. This spawned the idea of a “silent majority” that Nixon employed during his campaign for the presidency. The silent majority was defined as the “working-class white man [who] is actually in revolt against taxes, joyless work, the double standards and short memories of professional politicians, hypocrisy and what he considers the debasement of the American dream” (Lewis 166), and this group has been wrongfully memorialized as “these ‘hard-hats’ or ‘rednecks’…portrayed as ‘Joe six-pack,’ a flag-waving blue-collar anti-intellectual who, on top of everything else, was assumed to be a bigot” (Lewis 161). Further, this specific class had a “feeling of ‘not having a say’” (Lewis 179). Nixon and Wallace appealed to these people by promising to be their voice and uplifting their commitment to traditional values. Lewis writes, “there is a lower-income white group suspicious of change and defensive concerning the traditional values for which they stand…the media—and by extension, other elites in the country—have not paid sufficient attention to these ordinary people” (Lewis 165). This resonated with the White working-class because the media was solely focused on covering the changes in America, specifically of the “new working class” which consisted of people of color and women within the labor market (Lewis 161). The source of antagonism for the White working class could be described as the rapid social change that coincided with the government relying on working-class men to shoulder the war in Vietnam. Without a labor party in the US, working-class individuals had historically found support from Democrats. As Nixon continued to further the divide between the supposed doves and hawks, reconciliation seemed impossible. Democrats like George McGovern began to alienate these White working-class individuals. Lewis argues that “this alienation was complex, and it stemmed from a number of sources that included intolerance and bigotry among workers, the conservatism of big labor, and deep-seated cultural mores held by workers that were upset by the rapidly changing culture” (Lewis 181). I believe that the Democratic Party could have prevented this shift. However, they couldn’t rally against Nixon after the Kennedy brothers were both assassinated. Lewis points out “Bobby Kennedy’s brief candidacy indicated that blacks and white workers could still exuberantly support a shared candidate” (Lewis 166). Rather than truly uniting people, Nixon divided. If there had been a force truly committed to remedying the differences shared by the old working class and new working class, perhaps Nixon, and then Reagan, would not have been as successful.