The New Dealers have all left Washington to make way for the car dealers.

Stevenson’s line is a compact political pun that contrasts the reformist legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s “New Deal” with a later Washington he implies is dominated by commercial interests—here, “car dealers.” The joke turns on “dealers” to suggest a shift from public-spirited policy “dealing” to private-sector dealmaking and lobbying. Read as satire, it laments the waning of New Deal–style government activism and hints that postwar politics had become more accommodating to business, consumerism, and the influence of trade groups. The quip also functions as a critique of political branding: once the “New Dealers” are gone, the capital’s agenda can be captured by more ordinary—and more self-interested—dealers.