"We Need Them"

Through most of the campaign the Democrats had managed to keep matches away from their highly inflammable civil rights problem. But Democratic National Committee Chairman Paul Mulholland Butler struck some huge sparks on ABC-TV's College News Conference. "Those in the South who are not deeply dedicated to the philosophies of the Democratic Party will have to go their own way," he snapped, "take political asylum where they can find it, either in the Republican Party or a third party." Within hours, the landscape was bright with rebel fireworks that would doubtless enliven Democratic politics down through the 1960 presidential campaign.

In lonely Washington, Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman George Smathers, the Florida sparkler, called for reporters and tartly read off Butler for discussion that "takes people's minds off the virtues of the Democratic Party." In Louisiana, slow-burning Governor Earl Long, brother to the late Huey, proclaimed: "I've been hearing things like that 'integrate or get out' for a long time. You can tell Mr. Butler I said I don't intend to do either." Many a Southern politician echoed the sharp words of Mississippi Governor J. P. Coleman: "Instead of the South being thrown out, Mr. Butler may be thrown out."

Butler's explosion shed light on one fact: at the moment, no important Southern Democrat was ready to go so far as to leave the party in high dudgeon.

In Harlem last week, New York's Governor Averell Harriman was banking on Harry Truman in a desperate effort to get back some of the votes Harriman knew Orval Faubus was costing him. If Truman had been President, said Ave to the Harlem audience, he would have sent the paratroops to Little Rock in 24 hours rather than waiting three weeks as Republican Eisenhower did. "Is that right, Mr. President?" demanded Ave in one of those of-course lines. But Truman threw away the script, ducked behind the claim that he "wouldn't have had all this trouble." Said he: "I'm not reading anybody out of the Democratic Party. We want all the people in our column that we can get. We need them."

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