The No-Headed Donkey

When the dust of the political tornado in Minnesota had finally blown away last week, it left the Democratic donkey standing there without a head. Minnesota had unseated Adlai Stevenson, but it had not enthroned Estes Kefauver.

As the pattern of 1952 showed, winning primaries will not necessarily win the nomination for Kefauver. If he won enough of them, he would be hard to contend with. But his fellow U.S. Senators (who look upon him as an upstart), most regular organization Democrats (who regard him as a tricky lone wolf) and Southern Democrats (who consider him a Southern apostate) do not want to give the nomination to the Senator from Tennessee. If not Stevenson and not Kefauver, then who?

At the edge of the post-Minnesota vacuum, one Democrat loomed larger than ever before. He is New York's Governor Averell Harriman, the New Dealing multimillionaire with wide experience in the Federal Government and an important victory at the polls (in 1954, over Senator Irving Ives). As a fast-moving, "inactive" candidate, Harriman has been the subject of complimentary remarks by former President Harry Truman and the beneficiary of considerable spadework by Tammany Hall Boss Carmine De Sapio.

More than that, it was revealed last week, a Harriman candidacy was the main topic at a secret meeting of Democratic wheel horses from twelve western states in Denver early in March. The most listened-to man at that meeting: Indiana's Frank

McKinney, Harry Truman's onetime (1951-53) Democratic national chairman. The view of the Denver conference (and that of a growing number of important Democrats) paralleled the attitude of the New York Daily News reader who summed up the situation: "It's goodbye Mr. Quips, hello Mr. Chips."

A strong and loud advocate of desegregation, Averell Harriman might be considered unacceptable by many Democrats in the South. There are already rumbles of trouble in the South, e.g., the South Carolina Democratic state convention last week recessed until after the national convention and urged Democratic organizations in other Southern states to follow suit. This could set the pattern for a third-party movement, if Southerners are dissatisfied with the national convention's nominee. If the North and South split on civil rights, Harriman, or a similarly positioned Democrat, e.g., Michigan's Governor G. Mennen Williams, might emerge as the regular party nominee, while the South forms a third party.

If the national convention tries to reach a compromise between North and South, Adlai Stevenson might still have a chance. Or there could be a new compromise candidate, perhaps Missouri's Senator Stuart Symington, Texas' Senator Lyndon Johnson, or Ohio's Governor Frank Lausche. These and other names, e.g., Pennsylvania's Governor George Leader and New Jersey's Governor Robert Meyner, were being rolled around in the vacuum.

While the names whirled, it was clear that the Democratic Party's trouble was by no means new. Minnesota had only made clear a long-standing political point of 1956: Adlai Stevenson's position was never so strong as its veneer had made it seem. For months it had been apparent that there was a deadening lack of enthusiasm for Stevenson at some important bases of Democratic power, i.e., among some key figures in organized labor, organized farm groups, organized minorities and organized politics. Minnesota added another important factor: it demonstrated that there is a lack of enthusiasm for him among a considerable segment of voters. The widespread belief that Stevenson was almost certain to get the nomination had been sustained for months by the combination of two powerful forces: his own men in the Democratic organization, who kept saying that he had it all sewed up, and the politicians and journalists who believed them. What made the argument believable was the fact that there was no other logical Democratic nominee in sight. Organization Democrats did not know it, but the donkey had long been wandering around without a head.

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