DEMOCRATS: The Line Squall

The first warning thunderclap came on the second night of the convention.

For an hour that evening the sodden delegates had sat through a memorial service to Franklin D. Roosevelt, only half aware of the ceremony's bad taste, bored by its dreariness. "We are here to honor the honored dead," rasped New York's Mayor O'Dwyer. "Won't you please act accordingly?" But neither Bill O'Dwyer's pleas, nor prayers, nor singing, nor oratory dented the delegates' torpor. The rumble of conversation continued to fill the air, only subsiding a little when Congresswoman Mary Norton...

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