THIRD PARTIES: Phoenix & Dodo

Alf Landon could console himself last week with the thought that, though his electoral total touched a near-record low, he had at least topped Herbert Hoover’s 15,000,000 popular votes of 1932. No such solace was available to the nation’s third party candidates and their backers, whose wretched performances at the polls made the Republican fiasco seem a comparative triumph.

Socialist Labor’s John Aiken got some 7,000 votes, to 33,000 polled by Verne L. Reynolds in 1932.

Against Nominee Willie Upshaw’s 82,000 votes in 1932, Prohibition’s David Leigh Colvin last week got some 13,000.

The Communist Party, whose single stronghold is New York City, lost its place on New York State’s ballot by failing to roll up the required 50,000 votes for its candidate for Governor. The Red President nominee, Earl Browder, ran 5,000 votes behind his gubernatorial ticket-mate in the State. His national total was some 57,000, down 46,000 from 1932.

Even worse off was the Socialist Party’s Norman Thomas, who got 885,000 votes four years ago, 108,000 last week.

For the Red and Pink fadeouts there were comforting extenuations. Nominee Browder had campaigned far more strenuously against Alf Landon than for himself, persuading many a Red that he might best serve his cause by a vote for Roosevelt. Nominee Thomas, who got a large non-Socialist protest vote in 1932, could reasonably conclude that the electorate this year loved him not less, but Franklin Roosevelt more. In addition, his Party’s right wing split off, merged last summer with New York State’s American Labor Party. Neither Communists nor Socialists were displeased at losing strength to this new faction, under whose emblem last week some 275,000 New Yorkers voted for Roosevelt and Lehman. Red Browder had proclaimed from the start that his Party’s ambition was to lose its identity in a national Farmer-Labor Party in 1940. Last week in Chicago the Socialist Party’s national executive secretary and 1936 campaign manager, Clarence Senior, summoned the pro-Roosevelt Labor’s Non-Partisan League to begin building a Farmer-Labor Party at once.

Thus, out of last week’s ashes, little radical third parties could dream of rising in a new and greater incarnation. For the Union Party’s ambitious triumvirate, Father Coughlin, Dr. Townsend and Preacher Smith, the bird indicated by the democracy last week was not the phoenix but the dodo.

Dr. Townsend had boasted of some 10,000,000 Townsend Plan voters primed to do his bidding. Priest Coughlin had sworn that he would deliver 9,000,000 votes to the Union Party or get off the air. Preacher Smith numbered his Share-Our-Wealth faithful at 6,000,000. Last week their joint candidate, William Lemke, polled 650,000 votes.

Dr. Townsend, who had also vapored about “controlling” the next Congress, claimed 102 sympathizers in the new House. But of the successful candidates whom he endorsed, only a fraction returned the compliment in a pre-election poll by United Press in which 240 Congressmen-to-be declared themselves stanchly opposed to the oldster’s Plan. With Dr. Townsend thus proved politically harmless, U. S. Attorney Leslie C. Garnett announced in Washington last week that the onetime messiah would be prosecuted forthwith on the contempt citation voted against him last spring when he walked out on a House investigating committee (TIME, June 1).

“The National Union,” said Father Coughlin of his organization day after election, “may be compared to Joe Louis in his recent fight against Max Schmeling. Our aim now is a trip to the showers, and a new training camp for our comeback, if and when it is required.”

Three days later Father Coughlin, admitting his Union to be “thoroughly discredited,” announced by radio that he was keeping his promise, quitting the air. Many a citizen found himself in hearty agreement with the political priest for the first time as he throbbed: “It is better, both for you and for me, for the country I serve and the church that I love, for me to be forgotten for the moment.”