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party all over the country has grown more progressive, more interested in the poor and the welfare of the common people?”
“Oh, yes,” he said, “without any doubt all over the country.”
There were some pretty black spots even then. Jimmy Gerard had accepted it. He was a Democrat and he stuck with the Democrats. He was a rich man. He must have had all kinds of temptations to be against this and against that at various levels in the Democratic party, but he believed, particularly, in the kind of people who became Democrats. It's that sort of tasting of each other's personalities, each other's bent of mind and habit of thought, and particularly each other's emotional reactions. It is out of the emotions that people form their political philosophy. They're only slightly influenced by their intellectual and logical convictions. It's what they want reinforced, if they are wise and temperate at all, by what their intellect, their knowledge and their logic teaches them. But if they don't desire it deeply in an emotional way, they'll never set upon it.
One of the things that's very interesting to me about the Democratic party, as I've observed it in conventions and in mass operations, is that curious reliance upon a set of emotions, which are valid emotions. They are the emotions of aspiration rather than the emotions of immediate revenge
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