The American Presidential Election of 1948

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The 41st episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1948, the Democratic Party splinters into three factions, and everyone predicts Truman stands no chance. Finally, Dewey defeats Truman.

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The 41st Presidential election in American history took place on November 2, 1948. After Franklin Roosevelt died, Harry Truman took over, and soon after Nazi Germany surrendered to the Allied forces. Now, all eyes were on the Pacific theater of the war.

Truman took action and decided to drop the first and only atomic bombs ever dropped on another country. He did it to end the war quickly and try to save the lives of millions of both Americans and Japanese who would have kept on fighting otherwise. While today people still debate whether or not the action was justified, it’s hard to deny how bold the move was by Truman. And it worked. Japan finally surrendered shortly after Americans dropped two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The war was over, and this time Truman made it a point to not make the same mistakes that were made after World War One.

Truman had a very low approval rating- it seemed not nearly as many Americans liked him like they did FDR. Not only that, several people in his own political party were turning against him. They tried to get Dwight Eisenhower, the World War II hero and former Chief of Staff of the United States Army, to be the nominee instead of Truman. But they failed, as Eisenhower refused to run. Eventually the Democrats went ahead and went with Truman as their nominee, with Alben Barkley, the Senate Minority Leader, as his running mate.

Though Truman tried to moderate his civil rights positions, some Democrats were like “nuh-uh” and walked out of the Democratic Convention. They started a new political party, called the States’ Rights Democratic Party. Members of this party became known as Dixiecrats. The Dixiecrats wanted to keep the policy of racial segregation in the South allow states to keep their infamous Jim Crow laws. They nominated Strom Thurmond, the governor of South Carolina and the guy who led the walkout of the Democratic convention, for President, and Fielding Wright, the Governor of Mississippi, as his running mate. Fielding Wright? More like Fielding Wrong. Haha Sorry, bad joke.

Anyway, it wasn’t just the Dixiecrats who left the Democratic Party. Some Democrats argued that Truman’s civil rights reforms didn’t do enough for blacks. They wanted more. Former Vice President Henry Wallace, who, remember, would have been President if it weren’t for Truman taking his place in the 1944 election, disagreed with Truman on many issues. In fact, Truman had fired Wallace from his position as the Secretary of Commerce after Wallace talked trash about Truman’s foreign policy. Wallace opposed the Truman Doctrine and wanted to get rid of the House Un-American Activities Committee, which he thought violated civil liberties. Wallace also called for more regulation against giant corporations and an expanded welfare state. Naturally, opponents called him a secret Communist.

Wallace and his supporters also left the Democratic Party to form a third Progressive Party, called the, um, Progressive Party. Can’t we get more creative with names? Again, this was not the same Progressive Party as Teddy Roosevelt or Robert La Follette...it was a new one. This Progressive Party officially nominated Wallace as their nominee, with Glen Taylor, a senator from Idaho, as his running mate. Taylor had earned a reputation as being that one weird politician in DC. A guy known as the “singing cowboy” because he would sing songs and ride his horse up the steps of the Capitol, not at the same time, mind you.

So Wallace and Taylor were definitely unique. When they campaigned, they made a point of speaking to racially integrated audiences, even in the South, and because of that, Southerners sometimes threw food like eggs and tomatoes at them.

Oh crap, I spent so much time talking about Democrats and former Democrats that I almost forgot about the Republicans. Well, they tried for Dwight Eisenhower, too, but after Eisenhower declined, many familiar names stood out for the nomination. Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, Arthur Vandenburg, and Harold Stassen, who were all in the running in 1944, and some who didn’t run in 1944, notably Earl Warren, the governor of California. The Republicans decided to play it safe and go once again with Thomas Dewey, he was still governor of New York. They nominated Warren as his running mate.