The Right Wing Crushes the Great Henry Wallace
From the Vice-Presidency in 1944, yet when he Runs
for President in 1948 He Helps Nudge Truman toward
Progressive Stances (Such as National Health Care)
[an Example for 2004, as Nader Runs]
Wallace as Vice President
1940
Vice President John Garner
had opposed Roosevelt running for a 3rd term
so the President dumped Mr. Garner
and pressured the
Democratic Convention in Chicago that July 19
to nominate the plant geneticist Henry Wallace
who used to publish the newspaper, Wallace's Farmer
Wallace had been the Secretary of Agriculture since '33
running the New Deal assistance programs
to farmers
The right wing hated him
and slowly, during the following years
formed a Get Wallace! fang-pack
The Question of What Kind of Century?
1941
A human being named Henry Luce
owned several powerful magazines
including Life where early this year
he published an editorial
called upon an American Century
based on capitalism as opposed to "utopian dreams of social reform"
a Pax Americana
of money hunger & a We Know Better empire.
Henry Wallace answered with "The Century of the Common Man"
a New Deal for all the world through democracy
You can look it up in the vestiges of the past
Hating Henry Wallace
1944
The eyes of disapproval
among conservatives
began to focus on the
liberal plant-geneticist VP Henry Wallace
next in line
and party bosses began to mutter, "Get him out of here."
All that spring and summer
hubrisistic hacks hacked heartily
to gouge Henry Wallace from the ticket
FDR wanted Wallace to
work better with the Senate
and the big business Wall Streeters and crypto-conservatives
the President had brought in
to help run the war
wanted the New Deal intervention over.
It's a complicated tale.
There were a few powerful New Dealers that wanted
William O. Douglas to step away from the Supreme Court
and run for VP
But I think it was the National Democratic Chair
from the St. Louis machine
(close to Senator Truman)
who did the most to snuff Wallace from the fray
You can look it up
in the many Henry Wallace time-tracks.
The Concept of a New Party
Summer
FDR sounded out Mr. Wendell Wilkie
on forming a new Liberal Party
so as to escape the right wing sludge in the Democrat Party
& the howling, hating, hubrising Republicans
Wilkie had been defeated by the conservative wing o' th' Rep's
so that July FDR sent his trusted speech-writer/confidant Sam Rosenman
to talk with Wilkie
the plan was to commingle the liberal parts of the Democrats
with the liberal parts of the Republicans
Wilkie liked the idea
On July 13 FDR dictated a letter inviting Wilkie
to the White House or Hyde Park
but someone snitched the letter to the media
where it created an ink-squall so that
the meeting was put off till after the election
(Wilkie, however, died that fall
and so history was denied)
Roosevelt & Truman
July 19
Roosevelt came in his private train to Chicago
for the Democratic Convention
Big time pols are a bit like wolves
& I think the Dem-wolvse
judging the President's drop in health
felt FDR soon would pass
& that the VP would be the president
so it was grrrr
get Wallace
out of here
grrrr
Senator Harry Truman of Missouri looked good to them
though some wanted Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas
& James Byrnes (later Truman's secretary of state)
truly hungered for it
Wallace had a lead on the first ballot
but Truman swept into place
on the second
setting the stage for the dropping of the a-bomb
Left! Right! Left! Right!
Late 1947
Truman was advised to move to the Left
on domestic policy
to stitch up the New Deal coalition
farmers, blacks, Jews, org labor
& urban ethnics
and then to push the Cold War.
So said a long memo from Clark Clifford
advice which the man from Independence followed.
The Strength of Henry Wallace
February, 1948
In the Bronx
a special congressional election
was won by a candidate from the American Labor Party
who was pledged to Henry Wallace
A Gallup Poll predicted that Wallace'd get
13-18 percent of New York's vote
The Faked War Scare of Early 1948
What
Eisenhower in
'61 wd name
the Military-Industrial Complex
entered the "picture"
I shall call them in my history
the Military-Industrial Surrealists
or the mil-ind-surrs
The military-industrial-surrealists
with their hungers for profits & puissance
pushed forward a pre-planned war scare
early that year
part of which was to force the Republicans
to pass the European Recovery Plan
known in history as the Marshall Plan
which arrived for Truman's signature not long
after
the war scare had been promulgated
without any evidence of
actual Russian war intent
(there had been a Communist coup in Czechoslovakia
which had produced vast alarmist headlines)
For more, you could read Frank Kofsky's interesting
Harry S. Truman and the War Scare of 1948
a Successful Campaign to Deceive the Nation
March 17, '48
Truman at a St. Patrick's Day dinner
arranged by th' ultra right wing Cardinal Spellman said
"I do not want and I will not accept
the political support of Henry Wallace & his Communists"
July 15
Harry Truman was feeling feisty
in Philadelphia
at the Democratic Convention
where Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky
was chosen his mate
"Senator Barkley & I will win this election
and make these Republicans like it."
July 23-25
The Progressive Party Convention
also in Philadelphia
put forth Mr. Henry Wallace
for President
Among the points of the platform:
•an end to the draft
•destruction of all a-bombs
•better relations with the Soviet Union
"Wallace or War"
was one of his banners
grr grrr grr
went the Republicrats
Fall 1948 Campaign
When Henry Wallace ran for President
on the Progressive Party ticket
Truman did what good Democrats have often done
coopted the Left/Liberal
by changing his dance steps
from hokey-pokey right
to hokey-pokey left.
He de-emphasized the Cold War
attached himself to a strong civil rights plank in the Platform
called again for National Health Coverage
price controls to help consumers
protection for small farmers
& repeal of the union-hating Taft-Hartley Act.
At the one-room school I attended in Missouri
there were rock and mudball fights
among the children of
Democrats & Republicans
with the Democratic boys chanting
"Phooey on Dewey!
Phooey on Dewey!"
Public opinion polls said Dewey was going to win
George Gallup's final poll on October 30
gave it to Dewey 49.5 to 44.5 percent
The Wallace Campaign
There was massive red-baiting
of the Henry Wallace-Glen Taylor Progressive Party ticket
by liberal democrats
especially by a group called the
Americans for Democratic Action
(Communists were welcomed into the 1948
Henry Wallace coalition)
& Southerners who hated blacks
formed the States' Rights Democrat party aka the Dixiecrats
and ran Strom Thurmond of South Carolina for pres
"Keep America Human with Truman"
was one of Harry's posters
Democrats Sweep
November 2
Many Americans believed (back then) that the
popular vote
appoints the president
but election night '48 almost showed
how the "electors"
could have given it to Dewey.
All night Truman surged in the popular count
but trailed in the electoral college
till dawn when
he won the State of Illinois
& measured his victory.
Final tally: 303 electoral votes to Truman
189 to Dewey
Thurmond 30
Wallace zero
Popular count: Truman 24.1mk to Dewey at 21.9 mk
Henry Wallace at 1.15 mk
Strom Thurmond, States-Rights Democrat 1.169mk
& the Democrats won both houses of Congress!
(Wallace won 509,559 votes in NY
and the state went to Dewey)
Labor
In the end America's working people
particularly those in unions
voted for Harry
to stanch the assault on the New Deal
and the crushing of labor
"Labor did it,"
Truman said in Kansas City
the day after the voting
--adapted from America, a History in Verse, Volume 2
