If a lightning bolt had felled Richard Nixon on the night of his re-election as president in November 1972-before scandal and cover-up overtook his second term-he would be remembered as one of modern America's most influential politicians. Not only was he re-elected by a staggering margin, winning 49 states, he had also presided over a realignment of politics. His Republican Party had grabbed millions of voters from the Democrats to build what aides called his "New Majority": a coalition that included big-city Irish, Italian and Polish Catholics, and white Protestants from the South, Midwest and rural America. Far-sighted Democrats saw the danger, warning that their party needed a populist message to keep "the un-black, the unyoung and unpoor" on side.
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