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Show Democrats' 19S8 Chances Uncertain a. Truman's Popularity Grows But Party Itself Is Shaky By BAUKIIAGE Newt Analyst and Commentator. (This follows a series on the men most talked about as candidates for the Republican presidential nomination). WASHINGTON. One Sunday last month, a friend and I watched President Truman unveil a plaque on Covenant First Presbyterian church. The occasion was a ceremony establishing estab-lishing the church as a national house of worship for Presbyterians. Presby-terians. Just previously, a wreath had been laid on the nearby statue of John Witherspoon, Presbyterian clergyman, signer of the Declaration of Independence, Inde-pendence, and one-time president of what is now Princeton university. "There never was a time." Presi" dent Truman said, In paying tribute trib-ute to John Witherspoon, "when we needed more of the backing of those people who believe in the Golden Rule, and who believe In the teachings teach-ings of Jesus Christ." The President was, of course, speaking of mora) support, but he hnri rnmn tn ha rather cheerful because be-cause of another kind of backing which he had Just learned he had the kind measured by Dr. Gallup's polls. Gallup called it "one of the most dramatic reversals f political sentiment senti-ment in history." On October 10 of hast year, the poll reported Demo- cratlc party uaokhage strength at its lowest low-est point In IS years. Three weeks later, the survey was confirmed at the polls with election of a Republican Repub-lican congress. But today, Mr. Truman's popularity popular-ity Is way up. A year ago the score was S3 to 47 in favor of the Republicans; Re-publicans; in the last count it was 56 to 44 in favor of the Democrats. On the question: "Do you approve ap-prove or disapprove of the way Mr. Truman is handling his Job aa President?" the scoreboard said: , Approve 55 per cent ' Disapprove 29 per cent. The rest expressed no opinion. Much water has flowed over the dam since the two polls were taken More will flow; and, at any rate, no poll can measure the imponder able facing the Democrats They have been going through a whole cycle of hopes and fears. The October Octo-ber poll may have been almost as surprising as pleasing to party leaders. lead-ers. They know there must be an end to all things, and it is pretty hard to prove that the stream has not been crossed and that the voters who used, sometimes, to elect Republican Re-publican presidents, still shudder at the danger of changing horses. The one biggest abstract obstacle to the election of the Democratic president is the fact that the Democrats Demo-crats have Just been around too long. Undoubtedly the biggest concrete con-crete threat is General Eisenhower. Eisenhow-er. When that atomic boom first threatened to break, the President was on the high seas, but the de- tails were reported to him blow by blow and it was quite a blow. Probably the next biggest headache Is the Internal condition condi-tion of the party. After long delay and much dissatisfaction, a new nslional chairman, Sen. Howard McGrath (I)cm., R. I.) was selected, and welcomed In moat quarters. He has a job cut out for him because the Democratic Demo-cratic machine has grown very rusty In the last years, and it la not only rust which has corrupted. cor-rupted. Nor is it the machine alone that creaks. Will-o-the-wisp Wallace with his constant threat of a third party is a threat to the Democratic party itself. Nobody believes that a third party candidate could possibly be elected as things stand now. But did you ever see that traffic-safety traffic-safety slogan: "Don't try to guess what a child will do?" Democratic leaders are up against the same thing. They don't dare guess what that problem child, Henry Wallace, Wal-lace, will do. He Is quite capable of going ahead and starting a third party with the full knowledge that it couldn't accomplish anything but the election of a Republican presl-dent presl-dent A third party would have not merely a nuisance-value, but Wal- EJ.V,'l V 0 ice migni dream up a long range scheme of leading political labor movement like Brit-In's. Brit-In's. After many defeats, that turned Into a political party which Anally attained power and put a socialistic Imnmii n t v. - "''-- Wl III? tt.ll.ee whole British national na-tional economy So the Wallace threat is a very definite defi-nite one. And what about the labor voteT It has long been a theory. Iterated by former AFL boss Gompers, and (until psssase of tht Taft-Hartley act) reiterated by hit successor. Mr. Green, that there was no auch animal Franklin Roosevelt claimed there was no labor vote, as such. Former Secretary of Labor Frances Perkins Perk-ins said there was none, and in those days, there wasn't, despite the existence of the American Labor party In New York City. I doubt that there Is a "labor "la-bor vote" now, despite the AFL's new "Education and Public Pub-lic Relations" unit, and the CIO-PAC, CIO-PAC, .and their threats to punish pun-ish supporters of the Taft-Hartley law. As a matter of fact, I understand opposition to the law Is cooling, except where Ores are being artificially fanned, and old-timera tell me It will la) be modified and (b) be forgotten. for-gotten. The tall Congressional election in the eighth Pennsylvania district where such Herculean efforts were DUt forth to make tht hill an Ucua didn't prove too much either way, except that the highly-organized CIO campaign did NOT defeat the Republican Re-publican candidate. Party Machinery Hat Deteriorated Democratic party machinery has deteriorated rapidly since 1938 when it was discovered that Roosevelt's coat-tails were no longer strong enough to put local candidates into office Gradually, precinct, city, county and state organizations began be-gan to take far more interest in electing local officers than they were in working together as a unit tor the national candidate. In Roosevelt's Roose-velt's case, that was hardly necessary. neces-sary. And the White House got into the habit of thinking it wasn't necessary nec-essary to do much for the local people peo-ple either. So the gulf widened. It is true that real bell ringing was carried on by the left wing organized or-ganized around the CIO-PAC, but in some cases this support proved the kiss of death. The Democratic machine will have to work for the co-operation of Wallace and the present offshoots of CIO-PAC because be-cause it cannot afford to alienate that type of support Gallup a month or so ago reported in a survey cf political orientation that 50 per cent of the American people favored a middle of the road policy. Of course, much depends on who becomes the Republican candidate for president. That Is the reason that the possibility possibil-ity of an Eisenhower or even a MacArthur on the horlion raises jitters In the executive mansion. Much also will depend on the strength of the big city bosses. The Kelly machine is pretty weak. Chicago's Chi-cago's new Mayor Kennelly is giving giv-ing the city an administration such as it hasn't had in a long time. But he has weakened, not strengthened, the old Kelly outfit. However. I hear that Sen. Scott Lucas a down-stater, who always fought Kelly until the last time, may run for governor of Illinois. He is strong down-state. This might help Vrumnn with the Illinois delegation. How strong will the new Kansas City machine be? O'Dwyer is refurbishing re-furbishing Tammany, but the Tiger hasn't iti old wallop. How much the greatly-weakened Hague machine ma-chine in New Jersey can contribute, contrib-ute, I don't know. There is one thing to be considered. Almost all the machines (except Crump's Memphis regulars) have been weakened weak-ened by the growth of power of the labor bosses. What the Democrats may gain by the labor bosses' Influence Influ-ence in attracting some of the liberals lib-erals who made up the Roosevelt following, may be lost in alienating alienat-ing some of the old-line party workers. |