(6 of 7)
In Washington, Russell has lived with his sister, Mrs. J. K. Stacy, and at the Mayflower. In Russell, Ga., his mother still keeps his room in the family home. The Senator likes to point out that he has "enough family to fill the White House and overflow into Blair House across the street." He counts 39 nieces and nephews and ("at the last count; all the returns are not in yet") eleven grandnieces and grandnephews.
His campaign speeches make sense but they are platitudinous, delivered in an old
Southern oratorical chant. On the stump in Florida, he seemed tired and strained.
If Russell combined the oratorical abilities of Daniel Webster, William Jennings Bryan and Franklin Roosevelt, he still would have little chance of being the next President of the U.S. He is working to build up the South's old veto power, but there are other vetoes in the Democratic Party. Truman and his friends hold one, and they would almost certainly exercise it against the candidate of the anti-Truman Southern bloc. Truman's veto is also the greatest hazard facing Kefauver's nomination. Organized labor holds another veto, recognized most spectacularly in the famous order, "Clear Everything with Sidney."
Who Has the Least? An astute Democratic leader last week predicted that 1) no Democrat will enter the convention with 300 votes (Russell may have the most), and 2) the nomination will not go to the man with the biggest initial bloc, but to the one with the fewest enemies—a perfect expression of the Calhounian principle.
Another top Democrat, looking the field over, took no comfort from what he saw. In his view, Kefauver will not stand up well under Republican campaign hammering. Adlai Stevenson will be badly hurt by the fact that he was a character witness for Alger Hiss. Barkley is too old. Harriman's platform and television performances probably would be the worst of the lot. Oklahoma's Kerr is relatively unknown.
The Democrats can probably settle the issues of interest and principle that divide their party. It will be easier for them to unite (in the American party sense) than to find a strong candidate. It is the first question—how to re-establish a basis for party unity—that primarily concerns Dick Russell. The Democratic drive for FEPC will probably recede into a compromise, but that will not necessarily mean that political progress for the Negro will be checked.
A Southern Voice. What makes Calhounism work are the never-ceasing changes that go on below the level of politics and are ultimately reflected in the American party system. Russell will probably achieve tacit party recognition of the Southern Democrats' right to a very large voice in policies primarily affecting the South. But neither Russell nor anybody else can quiet the new accents in the Old South. The industrialization of the South is breaking old patterns, and thousands of Negroes are still migrating North, where nearly a third of them now live, and where the critical struggle to determine the Negro's place in U.S. life will probably occur.