DEMOCRATIC PARTY SWEEP IN OFF-YEAR ELECTIONS
The crushing victory of the Democrats reflects the pal this profound discontent of the masses of the country toward the
Republican administration, responsible in their eyes for the the other hand, they had the pleasant surprise of seeing Rockefeller beat his less fortunate colleague Harriman in New York. ) Obviously the Republican slogan "Peace and Prosperity," aimed at combatting this current, did not go down with the masses.
Despite sure signs of improvement in the economic situ-
unemployment remains very extensive, haunting fear of recession is still very much alive.
The American masses, furthermore, do not seem to have liked very much Dulles's perilous excursions to "the brink of the abyss," recently renewed in connection with the Quemoy crisis.
The scandals of the Republican administration, including those in the immediate entourage of the President ( the Sherman Adams case ), also helped to tarnish almost wholly the administration's high polish.
It is now obviously the end of the Eisenhower Era.
Nixon, who carried on the Republican campaign to the best of his abilities, finds himself handicapped in the race for the presidency both because of the general result of the elections and because of the victory in New York of the "liberal" young Rockefeller, who has thereby become political rival n° 1 of the present vice-president, and the new supreme hope of the Republicans for the presidency in 1960. The general character of the election results reflects a victory for the "liberal" tendency within both capitalist parties who still dominate the political scene in the United States.
The sweeping nature of the Democrats' victory, heralds a victory for Stevenson in the 1960 presidential give birth once more to illusions about a Postras of the Sold South, into a lator Party based on the transtormation of this party, breaking with the trade unions, the Negroes, and the farmers. But these are at present pious hopes with no future in them.
There is no doubt that the Democratic Party enjoys broad
FOURTH INTERNATIONAL support by labor. This support plays an important part in elections, including these last ones.
At least six states have been directly affected by the controversy over the "right-to-work" legislation, bitterly fought by the trade unions. In California the Republican Party split over this question, thus aiding the victory of the Democratic
The Democratic Party, however, remains solidly in the hands of an eminently big-capitalist apparatus.
The mutation of such a party into a party of the wageearning class is in practice impossible. The Democratic far from absolving the American masses from the task of building such a party of its own, renders its need even more imperious.
The Independent Socialist ticket, reported on in our last issue, despite having collected far more than the signatures necessary to get on the ballot under New York State's reactionary election laws, was simply ruled off it at the last minute by Carmine De Sapio, Secretary of State and also head of the notorious Tammany Hall Democratic Party organization. State Supreme Court Justice Kenneth McAffer overruled De Sapio's decision. The determined De Sapio forces then appealed the Supreme Court Justice's decision to the Appellate Court, which in a last-minute ruling upheld the right of the Independent Socialist ticket to appear on the ballot. As we go to press, we have not yet received word of the vote obtained by this ticket in the election. In our next issue we shall report on this and comment on the SW P's experiment in giving the ticket its all-out support.