THE PEOPLE JUDGE F. D. R.
Villard, Oswald Garrison
The People Judge F.D.R. By OSWALD GARRISON VILLARD THIS COMMENTATOR wants to go on record as saying that the significance of the recent election is most profound. I have read a number of comments...
...But it is an undeniable fact that if the President wins on that basis he will carry the election without the confidence of many who will vote for him with extreme reluctance on the war issue...
...Mac-Arthur, who has no political past to bother him, indeed whose political views and opinions as to international affairs are unknown...
...2, especially as the Republicans now hold 26 of the 48 governorships—they had only eight in 1936...
...In Philadelphia the defeat of the President's pet, William C. Bullitt, by a majority of 63,339, whereas the year before the Republicans had held the city by only 157 votes, speaks for itself...
...But, it is said, all of this will mean nothing if the President runs next Fall and the whole electorate is aroused and the country is told that it will be a disaster if he is defeated, that Winston Churchill and Queen Wilhelmina will not like it, and that Adolf Hitler—if he is still alive by then—will be encouraged by it...
...And in New Jersey the tremendous victory won by the Republican candidate, former Sen...
...I have read a number of comments in the press to the effect that its importance can be over-emphasized...
...It is entirely dissatisfied with his domestic administration of the United States...
...All of which can be changed again if the Republicans should choose someone else than Willkie, as, for example, Gen...
...Of course the result of the election next Fall will depend in considerable degree upon the status of the war...
...With that I thoroughly disagree, for the facts are that it was a 98 per cent Republican sweep, featured particularly by the Democratic loss of Kentucky...
...Surprise To Republicans Too Are not these facts sufficient to put an end to the talk about overemphasizing the importance of the elections on Nov...
...Whenever the electorate has gone to the polls since this war began it has voted against Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and there is no gainsaying that fact...
...Roosevelt will either refuse renomination or accept it and face overwhelming defeat...
...It is the more important because it is in accord with the trend of the elections of 1942 and such mid-term elections for the House of Representatives as have occurred...
...The electorate has judged him and found him wanting...
...I believe, for example, that the Middle West farming region will vote against him by huge majorities...
...Nothing could stop it...
...The Republicans openly stated that their unimpressive candidate was elected as a notice to Washington that the city of Philadelphia was capable of choosing its own executive without outside help...
...It was pretty clear that there would be a big slump in the Democratic vote, but that the Republican candidate for Governor would win and would sweep into office the bulk of the state ticket as well no one foresaw...
...There will be a clean sweep in 1944 if the Republicans nominate a satisfactory candidate, and if the electorate does not decide that, because of war conditions, it grudgingly will allow the President to remain in office to complete the job of defeating Germany and Japan...
...But if the war is over, it is my prophecy that Mr...
...Import For Next Year Nowhere was there what might be called an uprising of labor on behalf of Mr...
...Take Kentucky...
...It is now absolutely clear that if it were not for the question of the war leadership his defeat for a fourth term would be as certain as that there are stars in heaven...
...Take New York...
...Certain it is that the outcome was a tremendous surprise to Republicans as well as to the Democrats...
...If Wendell Willkie is the candidate he will be without the support of millions in the Middle West farming states who believed that when they voted for him in 1940 they were voting for a man who would keep the country out of war if he became President, and were completely outraged afterward when he went over to the war party...
...Roosevelt...
...Walter Edge—-127,-000—was in the face of the open alliance of Franklin Roosevelt with the Hague political machine upon which the President bestowed a United States judgeship, precisely as he turned over the United States district attorneyship in New York to Tammany Hall perhaps to help put over the .Democratic candidate in New York...
...No one had guessed that in an off-year, with so many men in the armed forces, the Republicans would carry the state with a majority of approximately 350,000, despite the fact that the American Labor Party, which has claimed to hold the balance of power, ran up a vote of about 326,545 (complete returns are not available at this writing...
Vol. 7 • November 1943 • No. 47
