FROM AN AUTUMN JOURNAL
29
of friends- it was the landslide for Eisenhower, rather than the de–
feat of Stevenson, which hit me like a personal isolation. I remember
the lovely feeling when Truman was so unexpectedly victorious in
'48, of having the country suddenly populated with unknown mil–
lions of people more thoughtful and self-respecting than we had ever
accounted for. This election I felt mocked for my optimism four
years ago.
But even twenty-four hours restore perspective. Am I only
rationalizing when I decide now that there is much to be grateful
for that Eisenhower did win and with such strong support in Con–
gress? Under whatever Administration these next four years are
bound to be grim-why should the Democratic Party have to carry
the ball; why not the Republicans? This is what has always happened
in
England-the Labour parties have come to power in periods when
things were so bad that no party could have brought security and
comfort, and therefore the Labour parties have had to bear the re–
sponsibility for the people's dissatisfaction. When Stevenson said he
saw no easy solution of the world situation, his opponents took this
to be his weakness. Now they will themselves be put to the prac–
tical test.
Then too, suppose the Democrats had again won a victory:
what would have happened to the extreme right wing of Republican
sentiment? Until these last weeks I had an inadequate notion of the
bitter, the almost desperate, feelings which were mobilizing in sup–
port of Eisenhower. I have not read Samuel Lubell's
Future of
American Politics
but I am told it makes a good case for the like–
lihood of a Republican victory because of the change in economic
status and therefore in the social identifications of the various ethnic
groups
in
this country. This could account for the Republican labor
vote-certain sections of the working-class population which once
thought of themselves as having special class needs and which huddled
together with their own ethnic kind and voted Democratic now
think of themselves as respectable suburbanites with the same prob–
lems
and goals as their middle-class Republican neighbors. But these
are not the right-wingers I have in mind; these new Republicans
are animated by social ambition, not by hostility. While they did
not rise to the Democrats' slogan that they had "never had it so
