Truman Defeats Dewey by Gary A. Donaldson

Author:Gary A. Donaldson [Donaldson, Gary A.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, United States, 20th Century, Political Science, General, Political Process, Campaigns & Elections, Biography & Autobiography, Presidents & Heads of State
ISBN: 9780813188706
Google: qeMzEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
Published: 2021-12-14T22:14:04+00:00

10

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The Democrats and the

Eisenhower Diversion

The Republican plan to draft Eisenhower in 1948 had fizzled when the general made it clear in January that he had no intention of running for president. But Ike’s appeal as a possible presidential candidate sent the Democrats panting after him in the mistaken belief that he had turned down the Republicans because he was, in fact, a Democrat.

Like the Republicans, the Democrats had been trying for some time to persuade Eisenhower to cast his lot with them, and he had refused just as he had refused the Republicans. But the Democrats had a bigger problem, or at least they thought they did. They believed that Truman was certain to lose the election in November, and that defeat would bring an end to the fifteen years of Democratic dominance in the nation. Possibly worst of all, a Truman defeat at the head of the ticket would drag down local Democratic politicians who were standing for election in 1948. One Democratic leader insisted that Adlai Stevenson and Paul Douglas would both lose in Illinois if Truman ran, that Hubert Humphrey would lose in Minnesota, Helen Douglas in California, Chester Bowles in Connecticut, Henry “Scoop” Jackson in Washington, James Murray in Montana, and the list continued.1 The polls showed that such predictions were probably true. The polls also showed that Eisenhower as Democrat pitted against any Republican had an excellent chance to win.2 So, to save their party from certain defeat, the Democrats continued to pursue Eisenhower on through the winter and spring of 1948, well after the Republicans had given up the chase. For the Democrats the immediate future of their party seemed to hang on whether Eisenhower would run as a Democrat.

The Democratic draft-Eisenhower movement was made up of a remarkably diverse group of party leaders. But it was the ADA more than any other group or faction that led the way in trying to convince Eisenhower to run. The ADA was desperate to throw its support to anyone except the doomed Truman. At its national convention in Philadelphia in February 1948, the six hundred delegates in attendance were restless over being bound to Truman. One participant wrote that they “almost erupted in an anti-Truman explosion,” and several delegates proposed that they attempt to persuade Truman not to run.3

In the two months between the ADA convention in February and the ADA’s next national meeting, James Loeb came to the conclusion that not only would Truman lose in November and take a large number of liberals down to defeat with him but that a Truman nomination might lead to the unraveling of the fragile labor-liberal coalition, and that could lead to the untimely death of the ADA. It also might lead, he believed, to a mass defection of liberals to Wallace’s standard, something Loeb and other ADA operatives greatly feared. Anyone could see that massive liberal support for Wallace meant a certain Republican victory. For Loeb, the answer to the dilemma was clear. He began

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