Democrats might even position themselves as the party opposed to punitive alcohol regulations. By the convention’s end, aided by his alcohol-deprived colleagues, Smith had succeeded in his quest and was the Democratic candidate for U.S. President. In the November election he would face Commerce Secretary Herbert Hoover, a reform-minded Republican backed by pro-Prohibition partisans. AS THE ELECTION approached, Rogers’s perspective on the nation’s illicit love affair with alcohol lost some of its lightheartedness. In a letter to the New York Times, musing on the perpetual danger now posed
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