National Affairs: The Democratic Argument

To Detroit's Brodhead Naval Armory last week, after a round of campaigning for his party's candidates in home-state Illinois, went Adlai Stevenson, titular leader of the Democratic Party. In his Detroit speech were the usual Stevenson quips and quibbles, but also there—and available for Democrats everywhere to hang onto—was a hard and fast line: 1) the Republican Administration, on its record, has permitted the domestic economy to become stagnant and has caused the U.S. to lose prestige abroad, and 2) only a Democratic Congress can make things right.

"There seem to be two main themes of the Republican campaign for Congress...