The Election:

...All this tended to create the "apathy" noted by so many reporters during the campaign...

...Despite local unemployment and discontent among certain groups of farmers, the nation is prosperous...

...Case's apparent election, by the way, is a severe blow to the personal smear as a campaign tactic...

...Nobody, but nobody (and that includes the President), has a clear mandate to decide these questions...

...It is obvious that the future of the Democratic party—locally and nationall--rests with men of this type...

...While there were interesting regional variations in the voting pattern, the overall result showed conclusively that the absence of Eisenhower's name produced the slight shift in key states which permitted Democratic gains in both Houses...

...despite a tide of neutralism in Europe and continued gains for Communism in Latin America and Asia, the nation is at peace...

...Both our friends and our enemies abroad should now understand the precise standing of left- and right-wing extremists in our democracy...

...Control of both houses of Congress has remained in the hands of the moderate Republican-Southern Democratic coalition which has dominated the national legislature since 1938...

...At the other end of the smear spectrum, the Communist-run American Labor party in New York State finally lost its official status when it failed to poll the required 50,000 votes for the Governorship...

...The grand strategy of the Democrats fluffed...

...McCarthy had little to do with this race, but his friends have little to cheer them anywhere...

...This election showed that they were pretty well satisfied with the present state of the nation...

...As in 1952, when several able Democrats won office in the midst of the Eisenhower landslide, attractive personalities managed to buck party trends...

...The result, as the Alsop brothers have already pointed out, is that the most critical issues of our time are being decided not by the democratic process but by a selected group of bureaucrats with "Q" clearance...

...As one examines the very close returns from so many states, it is hard to escape the conclusion that the major difference between the 1954 results and the 1952 Congressional races lay in the fact that Dwight Eisenhower was not on the ballot this year...

...Local elections actually provided more cheer for Democrats than the Senate and House contests...

...In South Carolina, the machine of Governor James F. Byrnes pushed through an amazing write-in victory for J. Strom Thurmond, who will now take the Senate seat of the late Burnet May-bank...

...With the Senate remaining virtually stalemated, the structure of President Eisenhower's control of Congress remains about the same: Mavericks from each party will decide the fate of marginal legislation, while the major items in the Eisenhower program--especially in the areas of defense and foreign policy--will continue to receive bipartisan support...

...Similarly, the fact that Democrat Averell Harriman ran ahead of his ticket in winning the New York Governorship can probably be ascribed to the last-minute attack on his personal integrity, reportedly launched at the instigation of Governor Dewey...

...In a certain sense, Mr...

...Only one major result strikes us as ominous, and that, strangely enough, is in the South, where November elections are generally meaningless...

...The election of liberal Republican Jacob Javits as Attorney General in New York State (while Democrat Harriman, with the help of 260,-000 Liberal-party votes, was winning the Governorship) was only the most dramatic of these splits...

...Both parties, as well as all independents, should draw comfort from the increased amount of ticket-splitting evident throughout the nation...

...he was noisily boycotted by outraged McCarthyites and won anyhow against an able opponent in an otherwise clean campaign...

...Although the Democratic party will organize the House of Representatives, its hold there is tenuous...

...But it also served notice that the politicians will hear from the people very quickly when they are not quite so satisfied...

...While the Democrats in Washington include such septuagenarians as Theodore Green, Matthew Neely, James Murray, Herbert Lehman and Alben Barkley, fresh young blood continues to assert itself at the state level...

...This means that the Democratic party has a long way to go before it can begin to feel optimistic about 1956...

...Most thinking people will be glad to see Illinois Democrat Paul H. Douglas back in the Senate and glad to see New Jersey Republican Clifford Case join him there...

...Three new Democratic Governors George Leader in Pennsylvania, Orville Freeman in Minnesota and Abraham Ribicoff in Connecticut--join the club of bright young men which already includes Robert Meyner in New Jersey, Edward Muskie in Maine, Frank Clement in Tennessee and G-Mennen Williams, the "elder statesman" of the group, who just gained an unprecedented fourth term in Michigan...

...The Democrats' evasion of principle may have gained them a few local votes this year, but it did little to impress those independent voters who are concerned about international affairs that the party is exceptionally qualified to govern nationally...

...it should more accurately have been described as "complacency...

...Finally, the record vote for an off-year election was all the more significant when one considers the lackluster quality of most of the candidates and issues...

...The fundamental issues of our national future negotiations with the Kremlin, a long-term policy toward China, atomic offense and defense, economic aid and world development, the future of Germany-received even scantier consideration...

...With the occasional exception of Adlai Stevenson, Democrats generally shied away from the grave issues of foreign policy in the age of world revolution and nuclear warfare...

...Also encouraging was the continued erosion of certain local one-party patterns: The Republicans retained recently-won Congressional seats in Virginia and added two in Florida and Texas, while the Democrats made unusually strong showings in Oregon, the Dakotas and New England...

...Eisenhower will have to conduct a "coalition government," but it is difficult to see the President encountering serious trouble with a House led by Sam Rayburn and dominated by Southern Democratic committee chairmen...

...The Democrats gained percentagewise all through his native Wisconsin and defeated veteran GOP Congressman Charles Kersten, who chose to make McCarthy the principal issue in his campaign...

...His victory in the first election after the Supreme Court's decision on segregation portends troubled race relations and puts the damper on premature claims of a liberal surge in the Deep South...

...in 1948, it should be noted, the ALP delivered more than 500,000 for Henry Wallace...

...despite the peccadillos of major and minor figures in the Administration, the nation has confidence in the selflessness and integrity of the President himself...

...Thurmond, it will be recalled, was the Dixie-crat candidate for President in 1948...

...it aimed almost exclusively to exploit economic disaffection which, it turned out, was rather limited...

...Both are men of outstanding intelligence and character whose devotion to democracy transcends partisanship...

...It would have been ludicrous, were it not so tragic, that the Democrats attacked the Administration both for considering intervention in Indo-China and for concluding uneasy truces there and in Korea all the more tragic because the Republicans defended themselves both as "hard" anti-Communists and as "peace-makers...

...The citizens of our country are becoming more alert, more discriminating, more demanding on Election Day...

...The Democratic failure to score anywhere near the gains registered by "outs" in previous off-year elections must be attributed in part to the continuing popularity of the President, in part to the Democrats' narrow presentation of issues...

...Likewise, in California, organized Communist opposition to Democratic Senatorial candidate Sam Yorty did not prevent him from making the strongest race run by a Democrat since pre-Warren days...