Portrait of James Aloysius Farley (1888-1976), chairman of the Democratic National Committee in the 1930s. He worked on Franklin Roosevelt's presidential campaigns in 1932 and 1936
Ten years ago political pundits seriously doubted whether the Democratic Party could ever be revived. The Madison Square Garden convention ("Twenty-four votes for Underwood") was only a prelude to the disaster that overtook Nominee John William Davis in the 1924 election. The Party's very makeup seemed to preclude the possibility of a comeback. In the South it was the party of the established order. In the North and West it was the party of a few political idealists and of strong but disreputable city machines built around the Irish Catholic and foreign-born...
