Democrats: The Nonconsensus

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"I'll Blast Him." As for McCarthy, if he is to break Humphrey's hammerlock on the delegates, he probably will have to challenge the credentials of some of his opponents. Dwight Eisenhower did so and defeated Robert Taft's conservative forces at the 1952 G.O.P. convention. Ike won that fight with a heavily financed, expert organization headed by Henry Cabot Lodge. McCarthy's staff at this stage seems incapable of managing any such coup. It was only last week, in fact, that the Senator's organization chief, Thomas Finney, persuaded McCarthy to begin actively seeking convention delegates and playing more traditional politics. His effort was only moderately successful. In New York, for example, 300 McCarthy partisans stalked out of a Democratic state committee meeting that allotted the Senator only 151 of the state's 65 at-large delegate votes, giving the rest to Humphrey despite McCarthy's June 18 primary victory, when his forces won half of the delegates elected from congressional districts.

The role of politician did not entirely suit McCarthy. Last week he repeated his intention of traveling to Paris to check on the progress of the peace talks and consult with the Hanoi delegation, thereby inviting charges of irresponsible meddling. When McCarthy announced that he would turn up in Atlantic City for the annual N.A.A.C.P. convention, the organization's director, Roy Wilkins, jealously defended his group's nonpartisan tradition. "If he comes here," warned Wilkins, "I'll blast him."

McCarthy appeared all the same, to address a motel reception of some 300, about half of them N.A.A.C.P. delegates. By bickering with Wilkins, McCarthy hoped in part to win favor with young Negro militants who mistrust the older N.A.A.C.P. leaders. The Senator's rapport with Negroes has not been close, even though he has repeatedly spoken out during the campaign for "the release of the colonial nation of Negroes in the U.S." He would like ultimately to gain the endorsement of Mrs. Martin Luther King Jr., who shares his antiwar stand. Meanwhile, his somewhat clumsy bid for the black vote came as a relief to the Humphrey camp, which in recent weeks had begun to view the professor's quiet powers as something eerie and unnatural.