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Gordon Haskell

Quarterly Notes

The Elections: A Post-Mortem

(Fall 1956)


From The New International, Vol. XXII No. 3, Fall 1956, pp. 179–182.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).



The sharp counterposition of major issues is not one of the outstanding characteristics of the American “two party system.” As a matter of fact, the two major parties are so organized as to make it virtually impossible for the electorate to choose between clear-cut alternatives in national elections.

In the 1956 presidential election campaign, however, we have a case in which the leaders of both parties seemed to exert themselves to compound the political characterlessness natural to the system. The general form of the “great debate” of this campaign revolved around the question of which candidate had the greater right to claim for himself the exact center of the political spectrum.

The result of the campaign gives a strong boost to the hypothesis that causal relations operate in politics as well as in other natural processes. One of the most issueless campaigns in modern history resulted in one of the most issueless, or rather, stalemated political situations imaginable. Eisenhower, the figurehead of “modern Republicanism” was overwhelmingly re-elected, along with Republican delegations in both houses of Congress who are about as “modern” as Coolidge. At the same time, a Democratic majority was elected in both houses, attesting to the continued status of the Democratic Party as the more popular, plebeian, liberal of the two parties. Yet this party’s Congressional delegation will be dominated by a group of the most reactionary political figures in America – the racists of the South.

The levers of power in Washington have been interlocked thus: the administration will be run by the big-business cabinet, while Eisenhower assures everyone that beauty and light prevail, as he struggles to grasp as much of what is going on as his native capacities and his health will permit. Congress will be run by the Southern Democratic-Republican coalition, thus insuring the defeat of any serious social program that might conceivably be prepared and pushed by any group of liberal Democrats. Added to this will be the pulling and hauling on the narrowest partisan basis over the narrowest partisan issues inevitable when Congress is controlled by one party and the executive by the other.
 

HOW DID THE CAMPAIGN assume the form described above? Is it simply that the prosperity in America is so vast, and that this, together with the recession of the danger of World War III which became apparent with the slackening of the cold war created such an unshakably self-satisfied, bovine mood in the American people that the disaster the Democrats experienced by leaving it alone could only have been exceeded by the disaster they would have brought on themselves had they tried to shake things up a little?

It would be pointless to deify that the continuing prosperity has generated a degree of complacency and conservatism in a broad section of the electorate. Without this it would be impossible to explain the continued solidity of the Republican Party. Yet, the fact remains that a majority of the people continue to support the Democratic Party as a general proposition precisely because they believe it represents a concern with the welfare of the “little man,” and resistance to the tendency of big business to extend its power in the political realm. They support the Democrats because their program and their record on social legislation is superior to that of the Republicans.

Why, then, did they not support Stevenson also? Was he not an eloquent spokesman for the program of his party? Did not the official liberals and labor leaders look on him as an exceptionally high-minded, firm-principled and generally glittering knight championing their cause?

It is not hard to understand why the official liberals were lifted into an euphoric haze by Stevenson’s oratory. It was an excellent expression of the current quality of their own political thought. Stern and forthright in demanding “bold initiative,” “new ideas,” and “creative thinking,” from others (the Republicans), Stevenson’s own program was utterly lacking in these qualities. His speeches may have seemed meaty to a handful of people whose good intentions and comfortable circumstances make it possible for them to live on general ideals alone. But to the mass of people, it was evidently pretty thin fare, at best. That is why one must ascribe the bulk of the votes he did get more to his being on the Democratic ticket than to his campaign.

Two issues which simply could not he tailed out of the public mind in this election were the struggle for Negro equality, and the war which broke out in the Near East in the closing days of the campaign.

On the question of Negro equality, Stevenson and Eisenhower ended up in a verbal draw. Both said they were for brotherhood, equality of opportunity, the Constitution, the Supreme Court, the progress of all humanity, and the like. But since on this question a bitter, historic, implacable struggle is actually going on in the United States, the leaders and ranks on both sides of the fight were interested in concrete consequences for their cause which the election of one or the other candidate would have.

To the Negroes, specially in the South, Stevenson’s real position was revealed not by his words so much as by his active wooing of their bitterest enemies, the Democratic leaders of the South. His failure to fight for a forthright position on the desegregation decision of the Supreme Court at the Democratic Convention spoke louder to them by far than his subsequent platitudes and assurances. In despair, many of them decided to cast what in the deep South is a purely symbolic protest vote ... and voted Republican. In the North, the shift of Negro votes was not so sizable, as the struggle there is not nearly as intense and deep-going as in the South, and industrialized and unionized Negroes have interests and attitudes which more closely parallel those of the organized workers as a whole.
 

WHEN THE WAR BROKE OUT in the Middle East, Stevenson sought to seize on it as the one “big break” which his advisors and crystal-gazers had been telling him he needed to overcome the spell of Eisenhower’s personality. He charged the administration with ineptness, bungling, having brought the country’s policy into an absolute blind alley in that area, etc.

It would be hard for even a fanatical supporter of Dulles to counter these charges. America was at cross-purposes with its allies, at loose-ends for a policy, and uncomfortably voting the same way at the UN as its arch-enemy. What a chance for the opposition to make political hay ... on one condition: that it had a policy of its own to offer which would be more popular at home and more effective abroad.

Throughout his campaign Stevenson had been making vague speeches about how America needs to support rather than oppose the aspirations of the Asian, African and Latin American people for freedom, equality and self-determination. He had talked about aiding them to economic self-development rather than tying them up in military pacts, and the like.

But when the British and French launched a typical 19th Century imperialist attack on Egypt in collusion with the Israeli government’s catastrophic “preventive war," all of these generalities evaporated, and were replaced with an almost equally vague suggestion about a possible policy revolving around the United Nations, with strong overtones of the idea that America cannot stand aside in this situation, but must assume, or resume, its leadership of the Free World, etc., etc.

All this sounded to a great number of Americans very much like an attitude and approach which could get this country involved in a war over whether the British and French or the Egyptians should control the Suez Canal. Call it short-sighted, if you will, but there must have been millions of people who could not see why American blood should be spilled in this struggle, especially on the side of the imperialists. Thus, when Eisenhower simply assured the country that this was one war America would sit out, it is easy to understand why they sighed with relief, and went to the polls to vote for Ike, even if they were otherwise unshaken Democrats.
 

IT IS NOW CLEAR that Stevenson was about as weak a candidate as the Democrats could have nominated for this election. But that is among the least important problems with which the Democrats, including their liberal-labor wing, will have to deal in the coming period.

In city after city, the old-line Democratic machines completed the collapse whose beginning was clearly marked in 1952. Where the labor movement stepped into the vacuum in a powerfully-organized and united manner, the Democratic ticket as a whole was able to hang on to its urban majorities. In Detroit, for instance, even Stevenson increased the percentage of his vote over 1952.

That the modern labor movement is now deeper in “politics” than it ever was before is clear. This did not make it possible for labor to steer a clear decisive course at the Democratic convention, or even to come close to swinging that convention toward the views of its most progressive and powerful sections on such matters as Negro equality. After all, the laborites had come to the convention completely committed to Stevenson, who, in turn, had already shown his determination to hold fast to the Southern wing of the party. They had no alternative, either as to candidate or political organization, with which they could counter-balance the weight of the South.

Thus, their power to influence the Democratic Party, Stevenson himself, and the American people in general, was cut down to a low figure. Despite this, the labor movement expended considerable money and energy for the Democrats. But no matter how well every district and block is organized, the political problem for labor continues, and will continue to be insoluble as long as they remain tied to the Democratic Party.

A million dollars spent on leaflets and radio time will not wipe out the Republican claim, directed at Negroes, that a vote for the Democrats is a vote to put Eastland and Co. at the head of Congressional committees. You cannot really convince the American people that the Democrats are the “peace party” in this country as long as they have no real alternative to Republican foreign policy, and as long as Democratic spokesmen charge every Republican reduction of the military budget with endangering the nation’s military security.

There is no basis for anyone to believe that a majority of the American people were, during this election, prepared to follow a revolutionary program. On the other hand, their mood is not reactionary, but conservative, in the sense that they want what they have, plus some improvements. On the whole, they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans to safeguard their interests, and are not at all scared by the fact, impressed on them by every means of Republican propaganda, that the labor movement is increasingly becoming the backbone of the Democratic Party.

The self-defeating, futile character of labor’s policy in this election was nothing new for the American labor movement. Some of their leaders are, as one might expect, taking the attitude that “next time we’ll try harder,” like the horse in Orwell’s Animal Farm. But even though the experience is not new, its monotonous repetition tends to have a wearing effect on the nerves which may, in due course, communicate itself to the brain-cells of the labor movement. That day will mark the beginning of a new political era in this country.


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