#1948 election

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Tallulah Bankhead broadcasting from her dressing room in the Plymouth Theater on October 21, 1948, as she introduces President Truman, who delivered a campaign address from Washington. Bankhead introduced Truman as “the human being” she prefers for president “against Thomas E. Dewey, the mechanical man.” She was starring in a revival of Noel Coward's Private Lives with Donald Cook and Barbara Baxley.

Photo: Marty Lederhandler for the AP

[todaysdocument]

Untitled. [What's the Use of Going Through With This Election?]

Record Group 46: Records of the U.S. Senate Series: Berryman Political Cartoon Collection

This cartoon concerns the 1948 presidential election. President Harry S. Truman, the Democratic Presidential nominee in the election of 1948, was widely expected to lose by a large margin to Republican nominee Thomas E. Dewey. This cartoon, printed just days before the election, shows Dewey confidently looking over the shoulder of a frowning Truman as they read bulletins showing the prevailing public opinion at the time. Despite several polls predicting a landslide victory for Dewey, Truman won the election in one of the biggest and most well-known political upsets in U.S. history. Journalists at the Chicago Tribune were so convinced that Dewey would win that they prematurely printed the headline "Dewey Defeats Truman" on the front page.

[deadpresidents]

Would I be correct in thinking that Jimmy Carter will soon be beating Alf Landon as the longest-lived major party presidential candidate? I know that there's also Strom Thurmond, but he was just a breakaway faction running in a few states.

Yes, I think Carter will pass Alf Landon on Election Day, actually.

And Strom Thurmond was the candidate of a breakaway faction, but he actually won more Electoral votes as the States' Rights/Dixiecrat nominee in 1948 (39) than Alf Landon did as the Republican nominee in 1936 (8). Thurmond also won twice as many states as Landon did (4-2).

[politicalrpf]

"Beat High Prices" Harry Truman campaign poster, 1948.

[racefortheironthrone]

I was surprised to find that in 1948 Truman lost New York, which would have made his re-election much safer. Was it Wallace taking away important votes or there was a bourgeois backlash in the middle classes favouring Dewey after years of New Deal hegemony or was it local factors?

Thomas Dewey was the sitting Governor of New York, and before that a hugely popular prosecutor. He was the local factor.

[newyorkthegoldenage]

Hundreds of supporters of the Republican presidential ticket of Governor Thomas E. Dewey (NY) and Governor Earl Warren (Calif) waited in the grand ballroom of the Roosevelt Hotel on November 2, 1948, for the election results. Their elation ebbed when the race was shown to be closer than anyone had expected, and only a few hardy campaign workers were left in the early morning of November 3.

Photos: Associated Press

[deadpresidents]

Russian archival records obtained for this book show that [Joseph] Stalin colluded with his favorited U.S. candidate in 1948, Henry Wallace, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s Soviet-friendly wartime Vice President.

The nature of Wallace’s relationship with the Kremlin has long been a subject of speculation. Soviet intelligence is known to have unimaginatively code-named the Vice President CAPTAIN’S DEPUTY during the war. But no evidence has ever emerged that Wallace was recruited as a Soviet agent. He was, however, we can now discern, a Soviet tool. He sincerely believed that “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviet Union and the United States not only could be achieved, but was essential for world peace. All the while, he looked away from (and naively followed Soviet propaganda denying) the existence of Stalin’s mass forced labor and terror programs. According to [President Harry S.] Truman’s counsel Clark Clifford: “It was never clear to me how aware he [Wallace] was of the uses to which the Communist Party was putting him, but whether he knew it or not, he was following the communist line, serving communist ends, and betraying those Americans who supported him as a serious alternative to the two main candidates [in 1948].” Wallace’s naivete about Soviet communism turned him into an asset for Stalin, if not a recruited Soviet agent.

Wallace decided to run in the 1948 U.S. election as the Progressive Party nominee. In April and May that year, he secretly liaised with Stalin about public policies that would be advantageous for the Soviet Union, coordinating his public statements with the dictator. Wallace secretly met with the youthful Soviet ambassador to the UN in New York, Andrei Gromyko, who dispatched the candidate’s messages to the Soviet foreign minister, [Vyacheslav] Molotov, and to Stalin himself. In his memoirs, Gromyko admitted to meeting Wallace, but downplayed the meeting’s significance, suggesting that after talking with him he considered that Wallace had lost contact with the pulse of American life. Archival documents in Moscow reveal that in fact Stalin took Wallace’s position and candidacy seriously, approving his public positions, and answering questions that the former Vice President put to him, which Stalin annotated in his distinctive pencil. Their alignment produced a published open letter from Wallace to Stalin, vetted by the Soviet leader in advance, to which Stalin then publicly replied, all as agreed between the two men.

Wallace’s Presidential election bid in November 1948 dismally failed; he ended up getting barely 2 percent of the vote, while Truman, to his and the nation’s surprise, won a second term. He defeated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Presidential history. Ironically, the staff of Wallace’s failed 1948 campaign included none other than the Soviet atom spy Ted Hall. Following his unsuccessful White House run, Wallace had a crisis of faith in his pro-Stalinism. This may have been caused by his realization that Stalin had used and discarded him after the election. Stalin had gotten what he wanted from Wallace. In 1952, Wallace published an article, “Where I Was Wrong,” describing “Russian Communism” as “utterly evil.” The Kremlin and its intelligence services nevertheless learned an important strategic lesson for later in the Cold War: that it could use the freedoms inherent within American electoral campaigns to influence candidates favorable to the Soviet Union.

-- From Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West by Calder Walton, Simon & Schuster, 2023 (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO)

[deadpresidents]

Was Henry A. Wallace a spy or just a Soviet tool?

I think Wallace was just deeply idealistic and probably a true Socialist at a time when Americans could not differentiate between Socialism and "evil" Soviet Communism (well...Americans still can't do that), and that his idealism allowed the Soviets to use him to their advantage. But I definitely don't believe he was a spy or even a conscious Soviet asset.

Calder Walton wrote a book last year called Spies: The Epic Intelligence War Between East and West (BOOK | KINDLE | AUDIO) that was published my Simon & Schuster and I actually posted this excerpt a few months ago about Wallace and the Soviets during the Cold War that might answer your question a bit better:

Russian archival records obtained for this book show that [Joseph] Stalin colluded with his favorited U.S. candidate in 1948, Henry Wallace, [Franklin D.] Roosevelt’s Soviet-friendly wartime Vice President. The nature of Wallace’s relationship with the Kremlin has long been a subject of speculation. Soviet intelligence is known to have unimaginatively code-named the Vice President CAPTAIN’S DEPUTY during the war. But no evidence has ever emerged that Wallace was recruited as a Soviet agent. He was, however, we can now discern, a Soviet tool. He sincerely believed that “peaceful coexistence” between the Soviet Union and the United States not only could be achieved, but was essential for world peace. All the while, he looked away from (and naively followed Soviet propaganda denying) the existence of Stalin’s mass forced labor and terror programs. According to [President Harry S.] Truman’s counsel Clark Clifford: “It was never clear to me how aware he [Wallace] was of the uses to which the Communist Party was putting him, but whether he knew it or not, he was following the communist line, serving communist ends, and betraying those Americans who supported him as a serious alternative to the two main candidates [in 1948].” Wallace’s naivete about Soviet communism turned him into an asset for Stalin, if not a recruited Soviet agent. Wallace decided to run in the 1948 U.S. election as the Progressive Party nominee. In April and May that year, he secretly liaised with Stalin about public policies that would be advantageous for the Soviet Union, coordinating his public statements with the dictator. Wallace secretly met with the youthful Soviet ambassador to the UN in New York, Andrei Gromyko, who dispatched the candidate’s messages to the Soviet foreign minister, [Vyacheslav] Molotov, and to Stalin himself. In his memoirs, Gromyko admitted to meeting Wallace, but downplayed the meeting’s significance, suggesting that after talking with him he considered that Wallace had lost contact with the pulse of American life. Archival documents in Moscow reveal that in fact Stalin took Wallace’s position and candidacy seriously, approving his public positions, and answering questions that the former Vice President put to him, which Stalin annotated in his distinctive pencil. Their alignment produced a published open letter from Wallace to Stalin, vetted by the Soviet leader in advance, to which Stalin then publicly replied, all as agreed between the two men. Wallace’s Presidential election bid in November 1948 dismally failed; he ended up getting barely 2 percent of the vote, while Truman, to his and the nation’s surprise, won a second term. He defeated New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey in one of the greatest upsets in U.S. Presidential history. Ironically, the staff of Wallace’s failed 1948 campaign included none other than the Soviet atom spy Ted Hall. Following his unsuccessful White House run, Wallace had a crisis of faith in his pro-Stalinism. This may have been caused by his realization that Stalin had used and discarded him after the election. Stalin had gotten what he wanted from Wallace. In 1952, Wallace published an article, “Where I Was Wrong,” describing “Russian Communism” as “utterly evil.” The Kremlin and its intelligence services nevertheless learned an important strategic lesson for later in the Cold War: that it could use the freedoms inherent within American electoral campaigns to influence candidates favorable to the Soviet Union.