HWS News
29 October 2024 • Alums NYT: How Ben Wattenberg ’55 Helped Explain the 2024 Election — in 1970 By Andrew Wickenden '09
The late Ben Wattenberg ’55, L.H.D. ’75, who served as an aide and speechwriter to President Lyndon B. Johnson, pointed to the importance of working-class voters in his 1970 book The Real Majority. As the New York Times notes, the book “was prophetic” in the 1970s and ’80s — and may be again today.
“The Morning,” the New York Times daily newsletter, examines the influence working-class voters have had on presidential elections over the past five decades using the prescient analysis of Ben Wattenberg ’55, L.H.D. ’75, a speechwriter for President Lyndon B. Johnson, and Richard Scammon, the Census Bureau director under President John F. Kennedy.
“If you want to understand this year’s election, a book published in 1970 turns out to be surprisingly useful. Both liberal and conservative analysts have recently cited its ideas, and the Harris and Trump campaigns have embraced its arguments in different ways,” the Times explains.
The book, The Real Majority, was published during Richard Nixon’s first term, but Wattenberg and Scammon “foreshadowed the political dynamics in 2024,” including cost of living issues, foreign wars and the ideological differences between likely voters on college campuses and those in suburban towns.
Wattenberg, who died in 2015, was an acclaimed author, political commentator and demographer, whose career included roles as a presidential speech writer, syndicated columnist, television show host and author of several books on the United States and current affairs, including The Real Majority and Fewer: How the New Demography of Depopulation Will Shape Our Future. Wattenberg graduated from Hobart College with a degree in English. He was awarded an honorary doctorate in 1975 and inducted to Hobart’s Druid Society in 2013. Learn more about Wattenberg’s life and career.
