Abstract

Politics and People: G. O. P. - Nothing to Sell

The voters of New York learned this fall that the "welfare state" is something real and is what Democrats have been giving them, nationally, these past seventeen years. Voters learned, too, that "anti-statism" is something hazy and negative and that, whatever it is, it can be had by electing Republicans. People appear to have concluded, reasonably enough, that there was no point in exchanging something for nothing. And that, basically, is how Herbert H. Lehman became a Senator. There were other factors in Lehman's triumph — the political unity of labor, closer than it has ever been, the U.S. Diplomat John Foster Dulles's blundering offense to racial groups in New York City and the democratic candidate's great personal prestige.