Work in Progress

There was no doubt about who would win the Democratic presidential nomination next year. But the Democratic party would have to go through the formality of nominating Harry Truman. Last week, at a one-day meeting in Washington, the national committee picked Philadelphia for the party's 1948 convention. The Democrats would meet some weeks after Republicans had picked their man.

The Democratic committee also installed a new chairman, Senator J. Howard McGrath, the New-Dealish Rhode Islander who had been Harry Truman's personal choice to run his campaign (TIME, Oct. 6). McGrath had no sooner taken over the chair from ailing Bob Hannegan than he had a chance to demonstrate his ability to duck. The committeemen had prepared a resolution condemning almost in toto the work of the 80th Congress. McGrath spiked the resolution before it came to a vote. He remembered that many a Democrat had voted for Republican-sponsored measures, among them the Taft-Hartley labor law. He reminded his fellow Democrats that, when Congress reconvenes, the President hopes to get bipartisan support for his aid-Europe and hold-prices program.

McGrath understood, if some other Democrats did not, that it is sometimes smart politics to appear not to be playing politics.

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