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Show Democrats Can Not Take It Easy Democrats can not sit back on their haunches and expect the opposition to give up. Right now everything seems to be going their way. But, unless there is constant attention to , improving im-proving the party, Republicans will make inroads swiftly. This point has been hammered home recently in speeches by Democratic National Chairman John M. Bailey. In a recent talk in Santa Monica, Calif., the chairman pointed out: "As we plan for the next campaigns and work to strengthen our organization we would do well to forget two myths: one, that the suburbs are hopeless Republican strongholds, and two, that we Democrats are greatly superior to the Republicans in getting out the vote," he said. "Here are some random Democratic percentage vote gains from suburban areas. Baltimore suburbs showed a 17.1 increase. Chicago suburbs went up 10.1. The New York-New Jersey suburbs went up 16.4. , "What happened in California? The San Francisco suburban sub-urban Democratic vote went up from 45.6 per cent in 1956 j to 51.1 in I960 and we carried the San Francisco metropolitan area. We lost the Los Angeles metropolitan area and it was the i suburban vote which did it. We polled only 41 per cent in the Los Angeles suburbs. If we can make gains in other suburban (Continued on Page Four) Democrats Can Not Take It Easy (Continued ftom Page One) areas I do not see why we cannot do the same in the Los Angeles suburbs. "Now as to the myth about our great organizational power, I have studied the relation of the I960 vote to the number of registered Democrats in ten states. In only two did we bring out a Democratic vote equal to or greater than Democratic registrations. registra-tions. That was in Connecticut and in Delaware. In the others the Democratic vote ranged from 44 per cent of the registration in Oklahoma and 91 per cent in Pennsylvania. "The Republicans polled a higher vote than their registration regis-tration in all these states except Pennsylvania and West Virginia. "It seems to me that the record shows we have done a fine job of registration and that we have fallen down bady in getting registered Democrats to vote and to vote for our candidates." |