National Affairs: The Democracy

• Share

The "opposition" of the U. S. took stock of itself. In failing to win the Presidency, it had lost practically all its power in Congress. Its House minority was 100 seats. In the Senate it was 17 seats behind. It was almost as though the 15 millions who voted for Smith were left without any voice in the doings of the 21 millions who voted for Hoover.

One certain Democrat was responsible at once for the hugeness of the Democracy's popular vote and for the Democracy's internal division. He was the strongest Democrat. He had demonstrated, apparently, that no living Democrat could have won this year. Now he was leaving politics (see p. 8), and the question was: to what, if anything, could the Democracy look forward?

Figures. One answer was suggested by statistics. Mark Sullivan, G. O. P. writer, took pains to show that Herbert Hoover had needed only 275,000 more votes, properly distributed, to get the electoral votes of the eight-State fragment that he lacked of a State-unanimous election. As easily, the New York World, and Professor Frank G. Dickenson of the University of Illinois, showed that Governor Smith lacked only some 354,000 votes, properly placed—about 1% of the total votes cast—to be elected President with 268 electoral votes.

Professor Dickenson explained the "real meaning" of the Hoover "landslide" as follows: "Take ten voters. The first man votes for Hoover, the second man for Smith and so on to the ninth man, who votes for Hoover. The manner in which the tenth man now votes decides the landslide.

"That is what happened in the election. Had the tenth man followed the examples of the other even-numbered men he would have voted for Smith. But he did not, so Hoover is our next president."

Factions. At least one voice was raised to urge that Governor Smith take the lead against the Hoover re-election of 1932. Albert S. Burleson of Texas, Wilsonian Postmaster General, said: "Apparently the teachings of Jefferson, Jackson and Wilson have been forgotten by the Southern people." But he was drowned out by a chorus of other voices. Bishop James Cannon Jr., hero of the anti-Smith crusade in Virginia, asked for the resignation of National Chairman Raskob. So did-Georgia's W. D. ("Praying Willie") Upshaw. So did the Georgian (Atlanta), the Observer (Charlotte, N. C.), the Winston-Salem Journal, the Mobile Register, Senators Simmons and Heflin, Governor Moody of Texas. Roman Catholicism, anti-Prohibition and Tammany were, of course, in all Southerners' minds. Governor Moody was more polite than most when he centred his fire on Mr. Raskob, whom he called "a cynical commercialist with an alcohol complex."

Mr. Raskob took his flayings in good part but gave no. immediate sign of retiring. Without reference to his own plans he proposed that the Democracy start the groundwork of its 1932 campaign at once. "The most glaring example of our lack of efficiency," he said, "is that, we allow a political organization to lie practically dormant over such a long period. ... I see no reason why we can't function right through the whole four years."