The musical contains several songs built around a group of machine politicians. In "Politics and Poker", Republican machine politicians try to pick a congressional candidate in a district they consider hopeless, while playing a game of poker, and compare politics to poker. The lyric is set to waltz tempo "to underscore the frivolity of their cynicism." In "The Bum Won", these same politicians commiserate with one another after LaGuardia has won the election without their support. In "Little Tin Box", they imagine a series of Tammany politicians attempting to explain to a judge that their wealth came from their scrupulous habits of saving ("I can see Your Honor doesn't pull his punches/ And it looks a trifle fishy, I'll admit,/ But for one whole week I went without my lunches/ And it mounted up, Your Honor, bit by bit./ Up Your Honor, bit by bit.")