But the Oregon race is hardly typical. In most Senate contests this year, a Democrat who supports Administration policy, perhaps with a few reservations, will be opposed by a Republican who takes either a similar or a harder line. In most cases, therefore, only those who favor escalation of the war will have an opportunity to make their views felt. A few Senate seats may change hands, but Democrats are likely to retain the 68 seats they have held for the past two years.

So far there has been no mention of the avowed "peace candidates." The omission is deliberate. Third party candidates running on peace platforms will be no more successful than they have been in the recent part; in other words, they will poll so few votes that they will only underscore the weakness of their cause. Nor are the people who are running in Democratic (or occasionally Republican) primaries against pro-Administration Congressmen likely to achieve many victories. Howard Morgan's decisive loss in Oregon suggests that opposition to an admittedly unpopular war is not enough to overcome the advantages held by incumbent candidates.

The only peace candidates who can expect to win are those Democratic incumbents who have always opposed the Administration--William F. Ryan of New York and George Brown of California, for example. And their success will be due not so much to their ideology, as to the fact that they are exceedingly well entrenched in their districts.

It appears that those who look to the people for a clarion call to end the war are going to be seriously disappointed by the results of this November's elections. Contests for House and Senate seats are unlikely to produce any stunning victories for "peace candidates," and have already provided some conclusive defeats. The impending fall in Democratic percentages cannot be seen as the result of a referendum on the war, but as a political inevitability.

The President realizes already that his actions are widely unpopular, and he will soon realize, if he doesn't already, that the results of these actions are likely to be even more unpopular. However, he also knows that the more harmful unpopularity comes from those who prefer escalation to withdrawal. If the present policy were ruled out as an alternative, the public would prefer expansion of the war to withdrawal by a 2-1 margin, according to the Stanford-Chicago poll.

That figure may change as Ky continues to assault the pagodas, or if an anti-American government emerges from the promised Vietnamese elections (which seems improbable considering who will conduct them). But the elections in this country will produce only an ambiguous verdict on the war, and a stalemate on domestic issues. If some kind of a satisfactory conclusion is to be found to the war, it will depend on the initiative of the White House, and not on the 1966 elections