Under the name of the New Democratic Coalition (NDC), Gore is trying to coalesce the factions of the New Politics. If he and others can make hodge-podge stick for four years, they will probably have control of the Democratic Party.

At this time NDC allies have taken over nine states outside the South, including Wisconsin and California and have substantial power (above forty per cent) in another ten. Including the semi-legitimate Georgia (Julian Bond) group and the newly recognized National Democratic Party of Alabama, the insurgent base is even greater.

But the NDC is not just a liberal New Politics machine for electing candidates and taking over state party organizations. According to Gore, "we hope to produce politicians with a strong concern for issues and leading their constituency, not with their own prospects of re-election. Most of its founders look upon it more as a "permanent issues caucus" at a national level. Once the November 4 election is over, building a national constituency and fighting for election reform will become the major pre-occupation of the NDC.

While somewhat of a paper organization at this point, the NDC will meet in Minneapolis in early October to build and organize; in December a general conference to plan policies is anticipated. If the NDC lives up to its founders expectations, it will be a major force in shaping policy when the Democrats take up the role of the opposition this January. Only later as 1970 draws closer will its partisan electoral nature become more noticeable.

In the West, Coalition forces are following the well-established lead of California. The California Democratic Council (CDC), formed in the wake of the McCarthy-like Stevenson movement, rose over the past sixteen years to become the major grassroots political organization in a state with a long tradition of weak party organizations. Organized town by town into councils, the CDC has had an important influence on the party candidates and platform. In western states like Arizone, Washington, and Nebraska who have had similar traditions of relatively weak party machines, the CDC is being avidly copied.

In machine states like Illinois, New York, and New Jersey, however, CDC-type groups are ineffective. The liberals must either work within the old party structure to take it over--not build a stronger parallel structure within the party as in California--or give up and form a new party. This hasn't been very effective in the past because liberals, whether because of their suburban anti-partisan phobia or for some other reason, continually shy away from the drudgery of precinct-leaderdom. In Pennsylvania and New York significant reform groups have risen many times, but they never worked long enough to bring about a permanent change in the style of their state's politics.

In Mississippi and the Deep South problems of the liberals are quite different. The blacks and the white liberals while a significant voting block can never influence party policy--the polarization is too great now. The only way to change the policies is by building a parallel party structure outside the state structure. This involves isolating the liberal block further, and brings up another major problem, what happens when the liberal block realizes that it is a chronic minority with no hope of ever winning office. Even with national party recognition as in Mississippi this problem is being faced for the first time.

Until now black voter registration and the first black campaigns for office excited the imagination of the biracial coalition. But the excitement is ending and the same ugly reality continues to exist, though in a slightly changed form.

Problems of building effective coalitions, maintaining one's philosophical commitment to the New Politics, maintaining liberal participation in precinct level drudgery in machine states, and dealing with the polarized Southern parties are the main problems faced by Gore, Lowenstein, Julian Bond, and their nascent New Democratic Coalition. They have forty-seven months to solve them