Sandburg Versus Hoffman

There is a growing, but as yet little-advertised, campaign to persuade the great American poet, Carl Sandburg, to run for Congress against the reactionary Clare Hoffman of Michigan. Mr. Sandburg hasn't committed himself one way or another on his candidacy, though the pressure for him to decide in the affirmative is fortunately increasing daily. If such a political contest were to take place, it would dramatically underline the paradox of the two different kinds of democracy for which Americans are fighting today. On the one hand would be Carl Sandburg representing the forces believing in progressive, twentieth-century democracy, and on the other Clare Hoffman, the little white god of believers in stagnant, Victorian democracy--the status quo boys. No two candidates could better represent their respective sides.

Since 1934, when first elected to Congress, Hoffman has voted "no" on every bill designed to help the poor, proudly boasting of his opposition to the New Deal and all that it stands for. It has not merely been certain proposals, or the methods of the New Dealers, that this mid-westerner has opposed, but the whole idea of progressive, responsible democracy. Nor does he hate the laboring man simply because he wears overalls. He hates him for daring to ask for better conditions and higher pay. This is the same Hoffman who has voted against every relief bill since 1936, who was one of the 33 House members to vote against the Social Security Act, who has fought against slum clearance, low cost housing, and minimum wages for underpaid American workers.

One of his most cherished hopes is to get a bill through Congress scuttling all unionism, using the defense effort as a guise for his plans, and at the same time he has consistently objected to any aid for Britain. The thought of the powerful trade unions in England and the possibility of an Allied army marching into Germany to destroy the resurrected medievalism of the Nazis may have been too much for this mid-westerner to swallow.

To defeat such an anti-democrat as Hoffman, Michigan fortunately has his spectacular opposite. Carl Sandburg, dirt farmer, biographer of Lincoln, student of government, and poet of the people, would be a candidate most likely of ending Hoffman's infamous career. A man with tremendous perspective, one of America's greatest humanitarians, Carl Sandburg might be refused by some because of his lack of political experience. But it is not bargaining politicians that we want in our next Congress, rather it is far-seeing statesmen and born democrats who will be qualified to help guide us through the rest of the war and the crucial peace to follow.