President Franklin D. Roosevelt sitting behind desk
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The discontent of farmers over AAA's failure to elevate corn and wheat prices was a dominant election factor in the Midwest. In Indiana the McNutt machine behind Senator Van Nuys and in Illinois the Horner machine, allied for the emergency with the Chicago juggernaut of Mayor Kelly & Boss Nash behind Representative Scott Lucas, overrode farmer discontent. In Nebraska only Governor Cochran, who publicized his State's economy and low taxes, survived a Republican sweep. In Iowa, Governor Kraschel was pitchforked out by 40,000 votes, mostly corn farmers'. In Kansas, the sentiment of wheat farmers was even more plain. Said Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace: "The outstanding conclusion ... is that people do not like business depressions.... The new Congressmen will probably be correct in concluding that they have a mandate from the people to ... bring about a greater income for farmers. . . . Here they come, fresh from the people. . . . Let's see what they've got."
The report of pollers that the great voiceless middle class had found the New Deal distasteful was confirmed by results: in New England, where if anywhere in the U. S. the middle class is in a majority, Republicans swept every State. In New Jersey the conscience of the middle class as much as the anger of Labor helped to re-elect Republican Senator Barbour over a Democrat backed by hard-boiled Boss Hague of Jersey City.
Franklin Roosevelt has taken the returns of other elections since 1932 as renewals of his "mandate from the people." If last week's returns conferred a mandate, it was upon the Congress, not the President.
Voters passed judgment with respect to sit-down strikes, court-packing, politics-in-relief. They implied their impatience with the delay of Recovery, with executive experimentation, with continued deficit financing. Chastised most emphatically by the general defeat of zealous New Dealers was the end-justifies-the-means attitude expressed by Harry Hopkins when he said, in an excited private argument with friends at the Empire City race track in October: "We will spend and spend, tax and tax, elect and elect."