Free The Victorious Opposition by Harry Turtledove Page A

mistake, whether international proletarian solidarity would have been better. She would never know now. What she did know was that the war had cost her brother-in-law his life, that her nephew had become a young man without ever seeing his father, that her brother David had only one leg.
    And she knew she couldn’t talk about the war today, not to this crowd. She’d represented this district for years before marrying Hosea Blackford, before becoming first the vice president’s wife and then the First Lady. Now her husband was a private citizen again, trounced by the Democrats when Wall Street collapsed and dragged everything else down with it. Now she wanted her old seat back, and hoped she could take it from the reactionary who’d held it for the past four years.
    She pointed out to the crowd, as she had from a different beer barrel twenty years before. “You voted for Democrats because you thought doing nothing was better than doing something. Do you still think so?”
    “No!” they shouted, all except for a few heckling Democrats who yelled, “Yes!”
    Hecklers Flora could take in stride. “Herbert Hoover has been president for almost two years now. He’s spent all that time sitting on his hands. Are we better off on account of it? Are the lines at the soup kitchens shorter? Are the Hoovervilles any smaller?” She refused to call the shantytowns where down-and-outers lived
Blackfordburghs
after her husband, though everybody else did. “Are there more jobs? Is there less misery? Tell me the truth, comrades!”
    “No!” the crowd shouted again. This time, it drowned out the hecklers.
    “That’s right,” Flora said. “No. You know the truth when you hear it. You’re not blind. You’re not stupid. You’ve got eyes to see and brains to think with. If you’re happy with what the Democrats are doing to the United States, vote for my opponent. If you’re not, vote for me. Thank you.”
    “Hamburger! Hamburger! Hamburger!” They remembered her maiden name well enough to chant it. She took that as a good sign. She’d long since learned, though, that you couldn’t tell much from crowds. They came out because they wanted to hear you. They were already on your side. The rest of the voters might not be.
    Herman Bruck held up a hand to help her descend from her little platform. “Good speech, Flora,” he said. Did he hang on to her hand a little too long? Back in the old days, he’d been sweet on her. He was married himself now, with children of his own. Of course, who could say for sure how much that meant?
    “Thank you,” she answered.
    “My pleasure.” He tipped his fedora. As always, he was perfectly turned out, today in a snappy double-breasted gray pinstripe suit with lapels sharp enough to cut yourself on them. “I think you’ll win in three weeks.”
    “I hope so, that’s all,” Flora said. “We’ll find out about how people feel about Hoover—and about Congressman Lipshitz. If I win, I go back to Philadelphia. If I lose . . .” She shrugged. “If I lose, I have to find something else to do with the rest of my life.”
    “Come back to Party headquarters,” Bruck urged. “A lot of the old-timers will be glad to see you, and you’re a legend to the people who’ve come in since you represented this district.”
    “A legend?
Gottenyu!
I don’t want to be a legend,” Flora said in real alarm. “A legend is somebody who’s forgotten things she needs to know. I want people to think I can do good things for them now, not that I’m somebody who used to do good things for them once upon a time.”
    “All right.” Herman Bruck made a placating gesture. “I should have put it better. I’m sorry. People still want to see you. Can you come?”
    “Tomorrow,” she answered. “Tell everyone I’m sorry, but I don’t think I ought to go over there today. Heaven knows when I’d get home, and I want to go back to the flat and see how Hosea is doing. This cold doesn’t seem to want to go