The Cordova daily times., 1921-02-01
TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 1921
POLITICAL CONDITIONS HAVE
 CHANGED

The Cordova Times says the Demo. cratic party of Tilden, Hendricks, Thurman and Cleveland is dead, and predicts that the old party as it was at that time has ceased to be a fac tor in American politics. It declares it has been killed by Bryan and Wilson and other modern party leaders and issues.
 While the statement is probably too sweeping in it's terms, it is, in meas ure, true. But by the same token the Republican party of tEe seventies and eighties is also a thing of the past. The late election did not so much in- dicate that the Democratic party is dead as it confirmed the fact that partyism as it existed third of a century ago is dead. The lessons of the 1920 election were those of sev eral. previous elections-though the manifestation was along different lines.
 In the late election the Democrats boiled approximately S,2O0,O00 votes and the Republicans approximately 16,2O0,000, and the five other parties about 100000 In other words about 35 per cent of the total votes cast were for Cox. In 1912 MT. Taft, the Republican nominee, received a little more than 25 per cent of the votes east for president.
 Cleveland is referred to by the Cor dova Times and all other authorities, and very properly so, as one of the great Democratic leaders of the past. Yet had the Chicago convention en- dorsed his administration in 1896 as completely as the San Francisco con- vention of 1920 endorsed that of Pres ident Wilson, and nominated candi- date that fitted the platform, no mat ter how worthy the candidate might have been, Senator Hill or Senator Gray, for instance, at the San Fran. cisco convention nominated Gov. Cox, any careful student of American poll. tics must admit that the race would have been between the Republicans and Third Party" as it was between the Democrats and Third Party" in 1912. Yet Mir Cleveland had received pluralities of the votes of the Ameri- can people in the three previous presi- dential elections.
 In the days of the Democratic party of Seymour, Tilden, Hendricks, Thurman, Bayard, Voorhees,, Carlisle and Cleveland-until the very last of those of CIeveland-and the days of the Republican party of Blaine, Nor ton, Sherman, Wade, Chandler, Conk- ling, the Camerons and Garfield one could count from one presidential election until the next that approxi- mately fifty per cent of the Ameri- can dictorate would vote the Demo cratic ticket and about fifty per cent the Republican. Elections turned on very limited margin in a few very close states.
 The figures here quoted resulted from far different conditions than those which existed in the old days of violent party opinions and devoted party attachments. The people have become independent of parties. The Democratic party responded first to the independence that now prevails when 1t submitted to a complete change of policy in the acceptance of the Bryan leadership in 1896. The Re- publican voters followed sixteen years later. when a majority of them refused to stand by the party organization and joined a Third Party"
 He who thinks the 16,200,000 voters who cast their ballots for Senator Harding last November signified their attachment to the Republican party of the seventies and eighties has been a very careless student of events. Mil. lions of them simply voted. against the Wilson administration. They are composed of people of every shade of political opinion and have shown, and, mayhap, will again show, that they are are quite ready when occa-