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Show News ftx Behini By PaulMallon Jpf' Released by Western Newspapel Union. VOTERS ARE DOING THEIR OWN THINKING WASHINGTON. The heavy toll in the primaries reflects some dogged, desperate, inside fighting which does not appear on the surface. Congressmen returning from the political battlefields back home con- tinue to report little public interest. One senator says people thought it an imposition for him to talk at all. They did not listen to speeches, and voting everywhere is light. Yet those citizens who are primarily pri-marily interested in politics, and also those who make it their trade, are anything but apathetic, judging from the senatorial mortality rate. Interpretations are difficult and confused. Some authorities are interpreting inter-preting the recent defeat of well-known well-known Sen. Bennett Clark to his isolationism. iso-lationism. It may have been that, but it also may have been an accumulation ac-cumulation of personal things which x -damaged his popularity, possibly also the fact that he was in with National Chairman Hannegan now, which seemed a slight change of character for him. Most probably, the influence of a St. Louis newspaper was important im-portant against him, claiming he would vote against any post- ' war settlement because of his father's grudge against Wood-row Wood-row Wilson. I suspect it was mainly because he was seldom on the job. Familiar Cotton Ed Smith's defeat was attributed to his opposition to- f the New Deal (and unquestionably the New Deal won that race), but I suspect the fact that he is over 75 years of age had much to do with it. He just could not organize as he formerly did against the long-planned long-planned New Deal bulk organizing of Olin Johnson. Sen. Rufus Holman lost in Oregon, and this too is said to be a victory against isolationism, but it also may have been due to personal prestige. pres-tige. Score Stands Even. As far as isolationism versus internationalism inter-nationalism is concerned, the score " so far stands exactly even. Defeated or not running for reelection are the so - called anti - internationalists, Clark of Idaho and Reynolds of North Carolina, as well as Holmart and Clark of Missouri But the successful list of anti-Internationalists anti-Internationalists includes Nye, Gillette Gil-lette of Iowa, Gurney of South Dakota, Tobey of New Hampshire (and notably Rep. Ham Fish, whose victory is attributed mainly to the personal sympathy engendered by his heavy opposition which made him an underdog). Mrs. Caraway, on the other hand, who supported ( the FDR policy, was defeated. What this plainly shows is that j the argument is dead. This was evident before the primaries, in fact before the war when both Nye and Tobey announced they were for world cooperation. The stands taken by Roosevelt and Dewey for the national fray also show the only remaining argument may develop between idealistic or practical cooperation coopera-tion with the world, not whether there should be cooperation. Many false symptoms, therefore, A are being read into the results. Two real ones stand out truly, in my opinion. Primaries are largely organizational or-ganizational fights. The man with the best organization organi-zation usually wins, especially when voting is light and interest low. It is plain from the results that inner political organization has developed de-veloped far beyond what we have known before. (This will be true also nationally with Dewey spending the bulk of his labors so far in organization, organiza-tion, and Democratic Chairman Hannegan calling for house-to-house canvasses.) But wherever the organization explanation ex-planation does not hold true, the heavy turn-over is a sign people are thinking things out, for a change. The new political figure, Sidney Hillman of CIO, has been statement-ing statement-ing almost daily that honest-to-good-ness he is not trying to capture Mr. Roosevelt, the Democratic party, and the congress in this election. ... He is only trying to "cooperate" with them. . . . Any suggestion otherwise oth-erwise is "distorted" and "unprincipled". "unprin-cipled". ... So he says. The facts of the matter are these, as near as I can ascertain them: The secretary of the Democratic congressional campaign committee says the CIO-Hillman front has backed about 75 congressional candidates can-didates firmly and directly. All of these are Democratic, except one. In an editorial, "Labor" charged $6,000,000 would be spent by the Hill-man Hill-man groups to elect men frequently representing causes of no concern to the working man. Thus you may see the true picture. pic-ture. As far as congress is con cerned, Hillman is trying to establish estab-lish a left-wing bloc of at least 75 (I suspect his endorsement list will be much larger) within the Democratic Demo-cratic party. This may or may not control the party in the house, de pending on how many Democrati and ClOers are elected. |