ABSTRACT
Michael Harrington and others have extolled "the constituency of conscience", the class of voters "of principle" and "reason" and "compassion". The concentration of the media in the Northeast and Hollywood provides for the other regions of America a sense of oppression with which Richard Nixon identifies. In 1972, Nixon inherited this side of William Jennings Bryan's constituents and symbols, while McGovern inherited the other side. Bryan, for all his populistic leanings, could not seem to find the language of the factory workers and urban Democrats. Bryan expressed the hatred among farmers and miners for those powerful forces that came into their regions, extracted their wealth, and left the outlands mired in poverty. He expressed their hatred for the corporate leaders and financiers, who grew fabulously wealthy and endowed libraries, cathedrals, and universities from whose towers they looked down upon the uncivilized, uncouth men of the interior.
