Voting as Usual

By adding two & two the nation's press and politicos tried to find rhyme & reason in primaries throughout the country, in order to find aid & comfort for November elections. But the result was a confused equation:

> U.S. voters, frequently bitter about playing politics in Washington, themselves played politics--as usual--and voted with only a secondary interest in a man's fitness to run the war and legislate the peace. ^ Voting was light. Voters did not care or were too busy to participate in the process they are fighting to keep. ^ The charge of pre-Pearl Harbor isolationism and obstructionism, used against approximately 85% of Republican incumbents, carried little weight. The people felt a man with honest convictions about keeping the U.S. out of war eight months ago could have honest convictions now about winning it.

> Issues and campaign tactics ran along .familiar grooves. War formed the broad backdrop--all candidates favored a vigorous prosecution of the war. But local issues lay in the foreground as more decisive factors. Most definite straw in the November wind seemed to catch up domestic issues like loopholes in price-control, Congressional pensions, gasoline X cards.

> Republicans need have no fears, apparently, about re-electing most incumbents. Everywhere Republicans did very well, and many got unexpectedly whacking majorities. And neither is there real evidence of bad trouble ahead for most Democratic incumbents.

> Aside from local campaigns, probably the widest editorial comment was given Republican Ham Fish's renomination in New York's aristocratic Hyde Park district-Said the Chicago Sun: "If you want to use primary results as a test of what people think about the war, Hitlerism, etc., it is best to do so at a distance. Those who rejoice at 'Ham' Fish's renomination, from 1,000 miles away, are far more likely to be Nazi sympathizers or appeasers than the neighbors who vote for him because they regard him as a likable blunderer who doesn't mean any harm."

Others generalized that the New York burghers felt a vote for Fish was a way of registering a vote not against Roosevelt the Commander in Chief but against Roosevelt the Man.

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