See Walter Lippmann's comments ("Why I Shall Vote for Davis," in the *New Republic,* October 29, 1924, reprinted in the chapter on the election of 1924 in Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., Fred L. Israel, and William P. Hansen, eds., *History of American Presidential Elections, 1789-1968,* Vol. III, p. 2578) about the futility of the 1924 La Follette Progressives' dream of replacing the Democrats as America's second party:
"First, the practical politics of the La Follette movement. Here in the East its supporters, the New Republic among them, are arguing that the new party is to destroy and supplant the Democratic party as the opposition to conservative Republicanism. This seems to me impossible. *The Democratic party is more or less indestructible because of the solid South.* [My emphasis--DT] A party which enters every campaign with roughly half the electoral votes [I assume that what Lippmann meant was "half of the electoral votes necessary for victory"--DT] is not in my opinion going to disappear. It seems extremely unlikely that La Follette will break the solid South, and almost as unlikely that the Southern Democrats will
coalesce, as the New Republic has suggested, with the Eastern Republicans. If the Democratic party survives, and if the Republican party survives, there is not under the presidential system of government any permanent future for a third party..."