From Socialist Appeal, Vol. IV No. 29, 20 July 1940, pp. 1 & 3.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for the Marxists’ Internet Archive.
The most glowing future that the election-year convention of the ruling party of this country was able to promise the American people is – maintenance of the status quo.
The outlook of the Democratic convention was adequately expressed when Senator Barkley, delivering his address as permanent chairman, answered Hoover’s charge that the Democratic administration has “stabilized unemployment” in its eight years of office. All that Barkley could say in retort was that stabilization of unemployment was better than the accelerated rate of unemployment under Hoover! Barkley was pronouncing it a virtue that “only” ten million men remain unemployed and without hope of employment!
Barkley’s address and that of the keynoter, Senator Bank-head, set the tone of the convention. Their speeches constituted a declaration that the condition of the country during the last eight years has been as ideal as possible and that these same conditions will prevail during another four years if Roosevelt is re-elected. Great reforms? Destruction of the power of the “economic royalists”? A job for every man and woman? These and similar promises of previous years were forgotten. They were no longer to be even promises!
What a marked difference between this convention and those of 1932 and 1936!
In 1932 the Democrats swore that all that Hoover had stood for – unemployment, hunger, insecurity – would be ended by the election of Roosevelt. Even the delegates seemed to believe that it would come to pass!
In 1936 the Democrats were riding an economic upturn (that collapsed the following summer), a decrease in unemployment plus PWA and WPA had given hope to millions, and Roosevelt campaigned with vigorous denunciations of the ‘‘economic royalists” whom he would now really drive back. A fast-growing labor movement directly took part in securing Roosevelt’s re-election.
In Chicago this week, however, almost nothing remained of the spirit o£ 1932 and 1936 After eight years of rule, the Democrats had to squeeze hard to work up a contrast between their America and that of Hoover; for in real life the contrast is scarcely very apparent. PWA is gone, WPA is skeletonized, and joblessness dogs the workers. A majority of Democrats in the House vote to bowdlerize the Wagner Act, enraging the CIO, while Thurman Arnold hounds the AFL.
In 1936 Roosevelt had been able to explain away the meagerness of the country’s gains in four years by his onslaughts against the “economic royalists.” On their shoulders he placed the blame. Today, however, the Democrats can no longer resort to that alibi. Roosevelt will be making no attacks upon the money-changers, for that would be ludicrous with Stettinius, Knudsen and Budd in his National Defense Council and such spokesmen of Wall Street as Stimson and Knox in his cabinet!
So all that the Democrats can promise, as their maximum for the next four years, is continuation of the present plight of the country.
That isn’t very much to sweep the country with, and a realization of that difficulty was a sobering blanket on the convention. Gone was the unfeigned enthusiasm of 1932 and 1936 – the high spirits of assured victors.
Many journalistic explanations were offered of the indubitable fact that the convention was not brimming with joy. Some journalists tried to make much of the lack of enthusiasm for a third-term.’ Others sought to discover a profound break between Roosevelt’s close collaborators in Washington and the professional party men around the country.
The basic explanation lay elsewhere. Were Roosevelt’s prospects what they had been in 1936 every delegate – especially now that Roosevelt wasn’t talking “left” as in 1936 – would have defied the Heavens in defense of breaking the third-term tradition. But Roosevelt’s prospects were very different now.
Only a month ago, it had seemed that Roosevelt had clear sailing into a third term. The Republicans began to wend their way to Philadelphia amid the deepest gloom. For what Roosevelt had lost as a vote-getter by curtailing his minor concessions to labor, he had gained in powerful support in Wall Street and among far-sighted businessmen who saw eye to eye with Roosevelt on foreign policy.
The maximum of support must be arranged as quickly as possible for France and England, America’s fortresses in Europe, Wall Street agreed, and continuity of Roosevelt in office was a minor price to pay for continuity and acceleration of his foreign policy. On June 10, the day Roosevelt made his Charlottesville speech, pledging “the material resources of this nation” to the aid of England and France, he unquestionably had the backing of the most powerful sections of the capitalist class. Had the situation remained as it was that day, the November elections would have been a walk-away.
The maximum of support must be arranged as quickly as possible for France and England, America’s fortresses in Europe, Wall Street agreed, and continuity of Roosevelt in office was a minor price to pay for continuity and acceleration of his foreign policy. On June 10, the day Roosevelt made his Charlottesville speech, pledging “the material resources of this nation” to the aid of England and France, he unquestionably had the backing of the most powerful sections of the capitalist class. Had the situation remained as it was that day, the November elections would have been a walk-away.
But the situation quickly changed. France capitulated, and the possibility of Britain holding out became slight. In that eventuality, the American capitalist class had to drop the perspective of immediate aid to Germany’s opponents. For without Britain and France as fortresses from which to fight Germany, America had to think of a different kind of a war and of a different time-perspective.
Instead of preoccupying itself with providing arms for France and Britain, American imperialism must think now first of tightly organizing the entire Western Hemisphere as its base of operations. Instead of the problem of sending to England and France as many airplanes and munitions as could be manufactured within the next few months, the exclusion of England and France from American calculations meant that the war problem becomes one of a longer view, of organizing America as the direct challenger of German imperialism.
That changed perspective toppled Roosevelt from his pedestal as the man of the hour. That changed perspective transformed the Republican convention from the gloom of its preliminaries to a new-born hope of success by the time Willkie was nominated. The lavish praise heaped upon Roosevelt by Wall Street spokesmen during the early days of June was turned off like a faucet; after all, if they were going to have a little time to prepare for the struggle for world supremacy, these big businessmen would prefer to have one of their own men in the White House and not a fidgety agent who, moreover, was losing his mass appeal.
Furthermore, the new perspective involves the need for “peaceful” maneuvers with Hitlerized Europe; Roosevelt is too hopelessly labeled as a friend of Hitler’s foes; a man starting with a clean slate would be more useful in the preliminary rounds of the coming world battles.
Whatever their particular reasons, all the authoritative spokesmen for big business now agree on this: they have a freedom of choice about the presidency today that they did not have on June 10. Hitler’s first successes made Roosevelt indispensable; Hitler’s further successes, wiping Europe out of American calculations, make Roosevelt quite dispensable!
The changed perspective for foreign policy had to be recognized by Roosevelt himself, before the convention opened. His July 10 message to Congress contained that lawyer’s formula: “we will not send our men to take part in European wars.” Though, upon examination, it is meaningless as a commitment against sending soldiers overseas – he could still send them for American wars! – it would never have been uttered’ by Roosevelt had the situation not changed so drastically since his Charlottesville speech exactly a month before. Bankhead and Barkley’s speeches followed suit.
Unable to offer the masses more than a continuation of their present plight, and shorn of their talking-point of an immediate national emergency – no wonder the delegates at Chicago were none too enthusiastic.
They drafted Roosevelt because he was still their best candidate; who else could they put up? But they had the distinct feeling that their best was none too good in the new situation. Twice Roosevelt had provided the best-possible fig leaf for their party – that incredible bloc of Southern poll-tax Bourbons, corrupt big-city machines and workers’ votes.
But all they could offer the working masses, now, was maintenance of the status quo. That isn’t much. And the more far-seeing of the delegates understood it well enough. Even if the workers don’t have a real alternative – a Labor Party – they can still vote with their feet. If enough of them do, Willkie Will be elected. That very real possibility haunted the Democratic convention.
Last updated on 23 May 2020