Honolulu Record, August 26, 1948, vol. 1 no. 4, p. 8
W.K. Bassett
"Stampede to G.O.P." Phooey!
This should perhaps go on the financial page, but I made a bet of $10 in Honolulu Hale this week that the next Congress of the United States would be safely Democratic in both Houses. I am not going to be ashamed to take the money on this one as anybody who would bet the other way deserves to lose his cash.
It's not hard to figure this one out. Suppose we admit, as we should, that Henry Wallace, as a candidate for President, will take more votes away from Mr. Truman than he will from Mr. Dewey. But that's on the presidential ballot. The congressional fight is an entirely different matter. Mr. Wallace's Independent Party has no candidates for Congress. The Democratic candidates, in every state of the Union, will not only draw all Democratic votes, but they will draw heavily of Republican votes.
The 80th Congress of the United States recently adjourned was as rotten a Congress as President Truman says it was and as Drew Pearson continues day by day to prove it was.
That Congress, among other bad commissions and almost worse omissions, passed the Taft-Hartley Law which, in view of both labor and many capitalists such as Cyrus Eaton, the millionaire of Cleveland, Ohio, is the worst blow at our industrial prosperity ever accomplished in legislative [sic] history in America.
The Republican Party voices its pride in the Taft-Hartley Law. The Democratic Party platform calls for its repeal. There is not a labor union member in the 48 states of the Union who can do other than vote for candidates for Congress who pledge this repeal. There are many wise industrialists who will vote the same way.
The Gallup Poll, out of Princeton, New Jersey, August 11, and recently printed on the editorial page of the San Francisco News, shows that today U. S. manual workers are 50 per cent for Truman, 42 per cent for Dewey and eight per cent for Wallace. Democratic congressional candidates will get the Truman and Wallace vote of 58 per cent.