Republican Upsurge

Republicans scored a bigger victory than they themselves expected. They came within two seats (49-47) of capturing the Senate, substantially reduced the Fair Deal majority in the House. In the Senate, they had knocked off the top Democratic leadership, including the majority leader, the whip, and chairmen of two major committees. They picked up six seats from their rivals, while the best the Democrats could do was to take one from them in Missouri. The Democrats held precariously to their control of Congress, but for the next two years, at least, the Fair Deal was dead; there would be no hope for such Fair Deal dreams as socialized medicine or the Brannan Plan. Not much Fair Deal legislation passed the 81st Congress; Harry Truman would have an even harder time in the 82nd.

In Ohio, Robert A. Taft, "Mr. Republican himself," scored a triumph. Taft, running stronger than he ever had before, even captured labor strongholds, in dramatic proof of his campaign declaration that workers did not regard the Taft-Hartley Act as a "slave-labor law."

It was a record off-year vote. Independent voters, with a scornful disregard of party labels, overwhelmed the well-trained legions of the big-city bosses. In New York, Ohio, Nevada and Connecticut, voters scratched their ballots to elect a governor of one party, a Senator of another. In Chicago, Jake Arvey's Cook County machine failed dismally to save Scott Lucas, and in New York City, a brash independent, running for mayor, overturned Tammany Hall.

The Republican upsurge was not nearly so sweeping as the last off-year election of 1946, when the G.O.P. gained twelve seats in the Senate and 53 in the House, to win control of both houses (only to lose it again in the presidential year of 1948). But it was a substantial victory nonetheless. The Democrats, painfully asking themselves "What happened?", were inclined to blame it on last week's bad news from Korea, which gave point to the Republicans' charge of Administration bungling in foreign policy, especially in Asia. "Blunders Cost Blood," screamed a G.O.P. advertisement in Wisconsin. The Republican accusation of Communists in government had also clearly bitten deep.

For Harry Truman, who had predicted a Democratic landslide, the election of 1950 was a sharp and pointed rebuke.

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