Stokes: Democrats try to please all but nobody’s quite happy
Concessions made to various groups intended to keep party from falling apart
By Thomas L. Stokes, Scripps-Howard staff writer
Washington –
The Democratic Party goes into the campaign tossing “asides” to Right and Left – spelled with capital letters – like a character in an old-fashioned melodrama.
In its ticket, its platform and otherwise, it made compromises to try to hold together, for another election, a party vehicle that is beginning to fall apart.
Party leaders, operating under orders from President Roosevelt, threw concessions here and there, like fading bouquets. Everybody got something, but nobody is quite happy.
The South was gratified at the dropping of Vice President Henry Wallace, which was relished the more because they were permitted to kill him off in the public arena. Pleasing to the South, too, was the omission in the platform of a specific indictment of the poll tax and a declaration for granting the vote to the Negroes in the South, although they protested mildly at even the generalized form of the plank.
Texas still raging
Mississippi and South Carolina seem to be back in the fold. But Texas is still out, rampant and raging. And there is talk of promoting a third party in the South to rally about Senator Byrd of Virginia if he will permit it – which is doubtful.
Negro organization leaders resented the appeasement of the Southerners by failure to condemn various restrictions and discriminations by name, as had the Republicans, and in the ousting of the Vice President, whom they recognize as a champion. The chief hope of the Democrats to hold a substantial part of the Negro vote is that the proven interest of President and Mrs. Roosevelt in their welfare may outweigh the clear-cut commitments by the Republicans.
CIO discouraged
Staunch New Dealers and labor lost Henry Wallace, but in Senator Harry S. Truman they got a much more acceptable second man than they might have if the Southerners and conservatives had gotten their full head.
But CIO leaders and the rank and file were discouraged over the outcome of the convention, more so, perhaps, than the facts warranted. For at this, the first convention since creation of their political agency – the CIO Political Action Committee – they did very well, all in all.
They still have much to learn about politics, although they are progressing fast. They lost their best trading point when they came out for President Roosevelt well ahead of the convention and upon this the President capitalized in his calculations.
Gesture of appeasement
The easing out of Vice President Wallace was a gesture of appeasement to businessmen and middle-class folks from whom Democrats expect to attract votes this year on account of the war, but who were represented as likely to refuse to vote for the President if Mr. Wallace were kept in the line of succession to the White House.
There’s a lot of talk about this group and its hostility to the Vice President. How large it is no one seems to know. It is just possible, of course – and this is one of the risks of political compromise – that it might be offset by workers who might stay away from the polls due to the rejection of Mr. Wallace, either through indifference or because of the failure of CIO political organizers to be as zealous as they would if he were on the ticket.
