Grand Expectations: The United States, 1945-1974 (Oxford History of the United States Book 10)

by James T. Patterson

The appeal of Wallace in 1968, however, transcended regional lines, important though those were. It rested also on his evocation of backlash in many working-class areas of the North. Wallace was an energetic, aggressive, caustic, sneering, often snarling campaigner. Eschewing openly racist oratory, he called for "law and order" in the streets and denounced welfare mothers who he said were "breeding children as a cash crop." He gleefully assailed hippies, leftists, and radical feminists, some of whom picketed the Miss America pageant in Atlantic City just after the Democratic convention, dumped what they called objects of female "enslavement"—girdles, bras, high-heeled shoes, false lashes, and hair curlers—into a "freedom trash can," and earned the label forever after of "bra-burners."47 Wallace took special pleasure in attacking anti-war demonstrators, often with thinly veiled references to violent retribution that excited many of his followers. "If any demonstrator ever lays down in front of my car," he proclaimed, "it'll be the last car he'll ever lay down in front of." He also set forth an economic program designed to appeal to blue-collar working folk. It included support for a federal job-training program, safeguards for collective bargaining, a higher minimum wage, and better protection for people who lost their jobs or could not afford adequate medical care.