Caught with the Goods

As if Harry Truman and his Democrats did not already look sufficiently foolish, up popped the Milwaukee Journal with evidence that they had clutched a Communist to their heaving bosoms. The very day of the Wallace speech, the President had posed outside the White House with assorted Democratic congressional candidates, among them Edmund V. Bobrowicz of Wisconsin. He shook hands with them and gave them his party-leader blessing. To harassed Harry, it must have seemed a safe and harmless gesture.

But even this routine performance backfired. Bobrowicz, the Journal said, was a Communist. No one would say when he joined the Democratic Party, although in the Aug. 13 primary he had defeated the conservative Democratic incumbent, Thaddeus Wasielewski, for the nomination in Milwaukee's 4th District. Bobrowicz, a blond war veteran of 27, and an official of the C.I.O.'s Redlined Fur and Leather Workers' Union, denied the Communism charge. He had had the support of open and avowed Communists and the P.A.C.

Both national and Wisconsin Democratic leaders were in a swivet. Should they read Bobrowicz out of the party--and thus confess their error? Should they keep him and try to brazen it out? Or should they piously denounce Communism and let it go at that? Most forthright reaction came from Representative Andrew Biemiller, Democrat from the adjoining 5th District. He was against letting Communists crawl into office disguised as Democrats.

Republicans, who had been none too happy with their nominee in the 4th District, a colorless ex-Socialist named John Brophy, could afford to sit back and watch the fun.

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