Keynotes

The calendar had just about run out of states' primaries and nominating conventions,* and it was high time for the Big Boys to start thinking in terms of November's congressional elections. The primaries had turned up few clear-cut issues or trends. They seldom did. Last week's surprise in Wisconsin (see below) was added proof that local feelings and local personalities count as much in primaries as major issues and voting records. What the boys in the states needed from now to November were ringing battle cries. Last week the Big Boys supplied them.

In Washington Democratic National Chairman Robert Emmet Hannegan sounded his keynote: "Hold the line against reaction." The Democratic issue, as far as Hannegan was concerned, would be to tar the G.O.P. as reactionary and claim all social gains for the Democrats.

In Denver and Cheyenne, Republican National Chairman B. Carroll Reece hewed to his official line: "The choice. . . is between a Republican Congress and a P.A.C.-Pendergast Congress." He hammered at the Democrats' "unholy alliance" with the "radical-dominated" Political Action Committee which "calls the tune to which the administration dances--a tune strangely like the Internationale."

It looked as though foreign policy and the tangled peace would come in for but little discussion. The campaign of 1946 would be largely on domestic issues.

* Only six remained: New York, Nevada, Louisiana, Colorado, Rhode Island and Connecticut.

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