The Indianapolis times. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1922-1965, 1928-11-08
WHAT TO TRY
next, WORRY
OF DEMOCRATS
Party's Future Uncertain
After Third Successive
and Worst Defeat.
SHIFT IN ALIGNMENTS
May Become Purely Urban
Group, While G. O. P.
May Champion Farmers.
BY RAYMOND CLAPPER
United Press stan Correspondent

/
United Press StaR Correspondent
NEW YORK, Nov. S.-This cleo
ton has brought the Democratic
party face to face with the problem
of what its future is to be.
This is the third successive de-
feat for the party and its worst. Re-
turns by the United Press show
Herbert Hoover with 444 electoral
votes, passing even the record of
Wilson who received 435 due to the
Republican split between Taft and
Roosevelt.
Smith is shown with only eighty
seven votes, the lowest of any Demo-
cratic presidential candidate and
ranking next to the historic eight
votes of Taft in 1912 for the con-
ISOLATION prize of presidential politics.
Both candidates, however, polled
tremendous popular vote. Latest
compilations by the United Press
show Hoover'S vote at 1925, OPT and
Smiths at 12,S01,1s This gives
Hoover a plurality of 5,l27.84l.
OtALGS AOSL III OOAlu OUutn
The Democratic party's national
ticket, though bolstered with
vice. presidential candidate from the
solid south, lost four of those sup
posedly impregnable states which
had been Democratic since recon-
struction days.
1t carried only two states outside
Of the EMBELLISHMENTS and
Rhode Island which apparently
were carried by Smith due to
combination of Catholic, wet and
foreign population.
All of this defeat came in face of
the fact that Smith reversed the
historic policy of his party on the
tariff and lined it up abreast of the
Republicans on the issue of protec-
ton.
Governor Smith proceeded on the
theory that the south would stay
Democratic no matter what hap
pened, and he made his chief APP
peal to the business interests of the
east and to the farm belt.
Neither of these appeals resulted
in votes, for Massachusetts and
Rhode Island were not really won
by those appeals. In addition Smith,
by ignoring sentiment in the south,
lost Florida. Virginia, Texas and
North Carolina.
Short on Man Power
1t is dismal outlook for the de-
feated Democratic leaders now who
must begin the dreary work of re-
Mobilization.
The party is short on man-power.
Except for Franklin D. Roosevelt,
who has just been elected Governor
of New York, there is no one in
sight as a possible candidate four
years hence, although other figures
may develop in the meantime.
The question of whether the
south again will take command of
the party or whether Smith and his
friends further will alter its COM
plexion as they did In the past cam
paign in the direction of making it
sort Of wet wing of the republican
party, is one that will be fought out
before the next presidential cam
paign.
The south took Smith, because it
had no one else, and because he was
deemed to have right to a chance
at the nomination in view of his
record as a vote-getter in New York.
The south turned on Smith and for
the first time bolted the party in
four states in that section.
May Become Urban Party
In 1882, if the two-thirds rule is
retained, it can be expected that
the south will insist upon q nominee
acceptable to 1t which Smith was
not. 1t will not again take a can
didate of whom it does not approve,
so long as the two-thirdS rule OBJ
tains.
The Smith forces, who will con-
troll the party machinery during the
intervening four years, are likely to
seek abolition of that rule in the
hope Of breaking the veto power
Of the south.
At bottom 1t is a question Of
whether the Democratic party will
continue essentially a hybrid of the
west industrial northern cities and
the dry rural southern states, or
whether it will become the urban
party Of the Nation and gradually
force a shift in the alignment of the
two old parties
Predict New Alignment
While the Republican party still
holds the industrial interests firm
ly with it, Hoover has in this cam
paign bid for the dry vote which is
strongest in rural districts.
These circumstances may fore
shadow a political realignment in
which the Democrats will go after
the wet cities Of the north while
the Republicans forage into the dry
rural south.