Democratic Sunshine

Ten years ago political pundits seriously doubted whether the Democratic Party could ever be revived. The Madison Square Garden convention ("Twenty-four votes for Underwood") was only a prelude to the disaster that overtook Nominee John William Davis in the 1924 election. The Party's very makeup seemed to preclude the possibility of a comeback. In the South it was the party of the established order. In the North and West it was the party of a few political idealists and of strong but disreputable city machines built around the Irish Catholic and foreign-born slum vote. In the South it was the party of Property, Protestantism and Prohibition. In the North it was the party of the Common People, Catholicism and Repeal. Al Smith's defeat in 1928 was proof that these mixed assets were a liability. And even the success of Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 was due more to a fortuitous combination of these heterogeneous elements against Herbert Hoover and three years of Depression than to any real fusion of the various things that pass for Democracy in behalf of the winning candidate.

Yet last week James Aloysius Farley could dress up in a dinner coat, sit on a desk in Manhattan's Biltmore Hotel, grin like an Easter egg, swing his feet and very properly crow: "The New Deal has been magnificently sustained. . . . Our majority in the U. S. Senate and our ma jority in the House. . . . The greatest plurality ever given to Democratic candidates!"

The party whose triumph Boss Farley was celebrating was not the party of 1924 nor the party of 1932. It was both and something more. Two years ago Mr. Farley took command of what John Jacob Raskob with lots of money and the brains of Jouett Shouse and Pressagent Charles Michelson, had built up from the wreck of 1928. Since then Democracy's leader in the White House had become a national hero. While still retaining the conservative South, the Party captivated North and West with a new brand of social reform and economic experiment. But, more important from a purely political standpoint, the Democratic party had become a going concern of tremendous proportions. Its machines in the North had been given new power (see p. 13) and the long disused national machinery, lubricated with Federal patronage and supercharged with fuel from the Federal treasury, had got up enough steam so that, barring major misfortunes, it was certain to go thundering down the tracks of history for many a good year to come.

President Roosevelt, the pilot, was, as Mr. Farley said, "very much overjoyed" at the victory of the New Deal, but Mr. Farley, the mechanic, was no less jubilant at the enormous momentum last fortnight's election had given his machine. How much momentum that was, was evident in the U. S. Senate. With their 69 seats the Democrats will have a majority in that body--even if they lose every Democratic Senator who comes up for re-election--until Jan. 3, 1939. Granting that Democrats are elected to the Senate from the eleven States of the Solid South, the party can maintain a Senate majority until Jan. 3, 1941 by holding in 1936 or 1938 only eight other seats in normally doubtful States. Result: If a Republican President should succeed Mr. Roosevelt in 1937, he would have a hostile Senate on his hands throughout his four years in the White House.

Not since 1902 (during Roosevelt I's first term ) has the party in power actually increased its number of seats in the House as the Democrats did last fortnight (see col. 1). Not in 46 years has a party which has maintained its majority in the House at a mid-term election lost the following Presidential election. Therefore Boss Farley had every historical right to count last week on the re-election of President Roosevelt in 1936. He had something stronger to count on. In 1932 the Democratic majority was largely a protest vote against Herbert Hoover. This year Mr. Hoover did not figure and the vote was positively for President Roosevelt and the New Deal. But by the same token, the Democratic Party had become too big and too unwieldy to mean any one thing.

Politicians always prefer a band wagon to walking a stony road alone and so do those wealthy ''fat cats" who provide the funds wherewith party machinery is kept greased. During the autumn many a citizen whose pocketbook in years past had been opened to the Republicans, realized that contributing currently to that party was like pouring money into a rat hole. Walter P. Chrysler handed over $2,000 to the Democrats. In Iowa, where Democratic campaign funds have always been scarce, money from public utility sources which formerly helped the Republicans this year helped the Democrats. After the election more & more Big Businessmen who like to play politics with their money were waking up to the fact that the Democratic Party would provide a good safe investment for a long time to come. If the inevitable result is that by 1936, or at least by 1940, the Democratic Party has become the party of privilege, that will be merely the penalty of political success, the proof that Mr. Farley has done his job well.

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