Rensselaer Republican, Volume 16, Number 48, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 August 1884 — CLEVELAND. [ARTICLE]

CLEVELAND.

Weakest Where He Needs to Be Strongest. The nominatjion of Cleveland, says the Chicago Tribune, has been forced upon the Democratic party by the most unscrupulous disregard of popular representation in convention and in spite of solemn warnings from New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and the Pacifie coast. The machine which achieved it will encounter much greater difficulty in overcoming the opposition to him in his own party during the campaign and on election day than it encountered in ti*e convention. No unit rule prevails at the polls, and the gag-law cannot be applied to the secret ballot. • Cleveland is a man of no more parts to-day than he was in 1870, when he was Sheriff of Erie County, and when he had never been heard of outside of that bailiwick. He has never risen above the plane of a local politician of the caliber out of which Bailiffs and Sheriffs are made. The distinction he has gained during the last two or three years has been purely accidental. He was named as the Democratic candidate for Governor of New York in 1882 because he was a negative man whom the Republicans were willing to vote for in resentment at the machine interference which forced the nomination of Folger upon them. He was then regarded as a political eunuch, and nothing has occurred since that time to change the public estimate of his condition. As Governor of New York he has played fast and loose with the Republicans and the Democrats, always leaning to the interests of the corporations and the monopolists. In pushing him to the front over the prostrate bodies of all the distinguished leaders of their party the Democrats, so far as they had any voice in nominating him, have avowed their cowardice and infirmity of purpose. They have taken up a nobody to run on a platform of nothing. Cleveland can stand on the platform adopted as well as any other; he could stand on any other as well as this one. No one knows what his convictions are upon any of the issues of the time, and he has no record on national affairs to embarrass him. If he be elected he • will be a tool in the hands of some clique just as he has been in his capacity as Governor of New York. But before he can be elected it will be necessary to convince the American people that it is wiser to trust the Chief Magistracy to the hands of an obscure man of mediocre ability and untried character, backed by a party of unsteady purposes, than to confer the office upon a man of world-wide fame, brilliant achievements, and patriotic impulses, representing a party of progress. All the indications point to the fact that'Cleveland will be jveakest in his own State, where he needs to be strongest. The opposition of Tammany, of the Irish, of the laboring classes, of the old-time straightout Democrats, and of all who fear the encroachments of the monopolists with a President who will be favorable to them, sums up the most formidable antagonism which any Democratic candidate could have in the doubtful States; and the methods employed to compass Cleveland’s nomination will aggravate and embitter this opposition. Mr. Blaine and the Republican party have every reason to congratulate themselves upon the work of the Democratic convention.