National Affairs: Salvage Job

There were all kinds of Democratic flotsam & jetsam washing about in the Republican flood — a lot of it eminently salvageable. The Solid South’s brassbound, high-wheeled old vote-getting machine was hardly splashed, would obviously run as well as ever as soon as somebody chucked a few more corn cobs into the firebox. The Democrats still had the presidency, and the political beaches were littered with postmasters and bales of undamaged patronage.

Here & there, in almost all sections, successful Democratic candidates perched like flagpole sitters above the G.O.P. tide.

Wyoming and Arizona had both elected Democratic Senators and Governors. In Colorado, go-getting Democratic State Chairman Eugene Cervi, a onetime Denver Post reporter, had played his cards right and had actually trumped a Republican Governor and Congressman. Rhode Island had elected Democratic Congressmen, a Governor and a Senator. Despite a rough campaign, the Dewey landslide, and almost unanimous newspaper opposition, Manhattan’s Communist-echo Congressman Vito Marcantonio was reelected.

So was his ideological twin, Harlem’s Negro Congressman Adam Clayton Powell.

High Blood Pressure. On the morning after the storm, many a Democrat struggled out of his Mae West and decided that something might be built out of such fine wreckage before 1948. Some tried to deny that there had been a Republican flood at all — just a heavy dew — cried that a small shift in the vote would have made all the difference. But Republicans, who had been saying the same things themselves for 14 long years, were confident that the salvage job would be a lot harder than it looked. They had been there too.

For one thing, the rip tide of bitterness and distrust between Southern Democrats and Democratic left-wingers was widening. As representatives of P.A.C. I.C.C.A.S.P. and other left-wing factions held a council of war in Washington last week, there was dark talk of a third party.

The Democrats had other troubles. Their big city machines had collapsed or sprung dangerous leaks (see below). Defeat had accentuated bickering and bad blood among party regulars. Suddenly everybody was after National Chairman Bob Hannegan’s scalp (while Bob hurried to Washington’s Walter Reed Hospital with a dangerously high blood pressure).

Some Democrats believed that the best course was a passive one—that if the party punted and prayed for two years the Republican Congress might become a target for the voter’s ill will. But how could Henry Wallace be kept quiet? And what was to be done with Harry Truman at the end of the two years?

Democrats were too busy fingering their bruises to have answers to these multiple problems. But few seemed particularly cheered by a soothing post-election observation by Eleanor Roosevelt:

“A defeat really is of little importance. The only thing that matters is what you do with your defeat. . . . Having no responsibility, while being able to sit on the side lines and observe with a critical eye, is one of the most delightful positions I know. . . .”