Democratic Party nomination On July 12, the
Democratic National Convention convened in Philadelphia in the
same arena where the Republicans had met a few weeks earlier. Spirits were low; the Republicans had taken control of both houses of the
United States Congress and a majority of state governorships during the 1946 mid-term elections, and the public opinion polls showed Truman trailing Republican nominee Dewey, sometimes by double digits. Furthermore, some liberal Democrats had joined
Henry A. Wallace's new Progressive Party, and party leaders feared that Wallace would take enough votes from Truman to give the large Northern and Midwestern states to the Republicans. Conservatives dominated the party in the South, and they were angered by the growing voice of labor unions and black voters in the party outside the South. The hope that Truman would reverse course faded when he vetoed the
Taft-Hartley Law, which sought to reduce the power of labor unions. Congress voted to override Truman's veto, and the
Taft-Hartley Law went into effect on June 23, 1947. Finally, Truman's appointment of a liberal
civil rights commission convinced Southern conservatives that to re-establish their voice they had to threaten
third-party action to defeat Truman in 1948.
Alexander F. Whitney, who was previously critical of Truman and threatened to finance a third-party campaign, praised him after Truman vetoed the Taft–Hartley Act and stated that the veto "vindicated him in the eyes of labor". Whitney and
Brotherhood of Railroad Trainmen had been supporters of Wallace since the 1944 convention. Wallace stated that he wanted "to work within the Democratic party realm" in September 1947. Truman was aware of his unpopularity. In July 1947, he privately offered to be Eisenhower's running mate on the Democratic ticket if MacArthur won the Republican nomination, an offer that Eisenhower declined. Truman's offer to Eisenhower did not become public knowledge during the campaign. As a result of Truman's low standing in the polls, several Democratic party bosses began working to "dump" Truman and nominate a more popular candidate. Among the leaders of this movement were
Jacob Arvey, the head of the powerful Cook County (Chicago) Democratic organization;
Frank Hague, the boss of New Jersey;
James Roosevelt, the eldest son of former President
Franklin D. Roosevelt; and liberal Senator
Claude Pepper from Florida. The rebels hoped to draft Eisenhower as the Democratic presidential candidate. On July 10, Eisenhower officially refused to be a candidate. There was then an attempt to put forward Supreme Court Justice
William O. Douglas, but Douglas also declared that he would not be a presidential candidate. Finally, Senator Pepper declared his intention to challenge Truman for the presidential nomination. His candidacy collapsed when the liberal
Americans for Democratic Action and the
Congress of Industrial Organizations withheld their support, partly due to concerns over Pepper's attacks on Truman's foreign policy decisions regarding the Soviet Union. As a result of the refusal by most of the dump-Truman delegates to support him, Pepper withdrew his candidacy for the nomination on July 16. Lacking a candidate acceptable to all sides, the leaders of the dump-Truman movement reluctantly agreed to support Truman for the nomination.
Democratic Convention At the Democratic Convention, Truman initially proposed a
civil rights plank to the party platform that moderated the strong vocal support for civil rights that he had expressed at the NAACP convention in 1947, and to Congress in February 1948. This proposal disappointed Northern and Western liberals who wanted more swift and sweeping reforms in civil rights, but it also failed to placate Southern conservatives, and both sides decided to present their own amendments and proposals to Truman's civil rights plank. Former Texas Governor
Dan Moody proposed a plank that supported the status quo of states' rights; a similar but shorter proposal was made by Cecil Sims of the Tennessee delegation. On the liberal side, Wisconsin Representative
Andrew Biemiller proposed a strong civil rights plank that was more explicit and direct in its language than Truman's convention proposal. Minneapolis Mayor
Hubert Humphrey led the support for the Biemiller plank. In his speech to the convention, Humphrey memorably stated that "the time has come for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights!" Truman and his staff knew it was highly likely that any civil rights plank would lead to Southern delegates staging a walk-out in protest, but Truman believed that civil rights was an important moral cause and ultimately abandoned his advisers' attempts to "soften the approach" with the moderate plank; so the President supported and defended the "Crackpot" Biemiller plank, which passed by 651.5 votes to 582.5. It also received strong support from many of the big-city party bosses, most of whom felt that the civil rights platform would encourage the growing black population in their cities to vote for the Democrats. The passage of the civil rights platform caused some three dozen Southern delegates, led by South Carolina Governor
Strom Thurmond, to walk out of the convention. The Southern delegates who remained nominated Senator
Richard Russell Jr. from Georgia for the Democratic nomination as a rebuke to Truman. Nonetheless, 947 Democratic delegates voted for Truman as the Democratic nominee, while Russell received only 266 votes, all from the South. Truman's first choice for his running mate was Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, hoping that it might make the ticket more appealing to liberals. Douglas refused the nomination. Needing an alternative, Truman then selected Senator
Alben W. Barkley from
Kentucky, who had delivered the convention's
keynote address, as his running mate, and Barkley was nominated by acclamation. Truman gave a fighting acceptance speech, he stated that "Senator Barkley and I will win this election and make the Republicans like it – don't you forget it!... We will do that because they are wrong and we are right." He claimed that the Republican Party had, "ever since its inception... been under the control of special privilege; and they have completely proved it in the Eightieth Congress." At the end of the speech, the "delegates rose to their feet and cheered loudly for two minutes... for a moment Truman had created the illusion – few regarded it as more than an illusion – that the Democrats had a fighting chance in November."
Republican Party nomination For both Republicans and Democrats, there were movements of support for General
Dwight D. Eisenhower, the most popular general of World War II and a favorite in the polls. Unlike the latter movement within the Democratic Party, however, the Republican draft movement came largely from the grassroots of the party. By January 23, 1948, the grassroots movement had successfully entered Eisenhower's name into every state holding a Republican presidential primary, and polls gave him a significant lead against all other contenders. With the first state primary approaching, Eisenhower was forced to make a quick decision. Stating that soldiers should keep out of politics, Eisenhower declined to run and requested that the grassroots draft movement cease its activities. After a number of failed efforts to get Eisenhower to reconsider, the organization disbanded, with the majority of its leadership endorsing the presidential campaign of the former Governor of
Minnesota,
Harold Stassen. With Eisenhower refusing to run, the contest for the Republican nomination was between Stassen, New York Governor
Thomas E. Dewey, Senator
Robert A. Taft from Ohio, California Governor
Earl Warren, General
Douglas MacArthur, and Senator
Arthur H. Vandenberg from Michigan, the senior Republican in the Senate. Dewey, who had been the Republican nominee in
1944, was regarded as the frontrunner when the primaries began. Dewey was the acknowledged leader of the Republican Party's
Eastern Establishment. In 1946 he had been re-elected governor of New York by the largest margin in state history. Dewey's handicap was that many Republicans disliked him on a personal level; he often struck observers as cold, stiff, and calculating. Taft was the leader of the Republican Party's conservative wing, which was strongest in the Midwest and parts of the South. Taft called for abolishing many
New Deal welfare programs, which he felt were harmful to business interests, and he was skeptical of American involvement in foreign alliances such as the
United Nations. Taft had two major weaknesses: He was a plodding, dull campaigner, and he was viewed by most party leaders as being too conservative and controversial to win a presidential election. Both Vandenberg and Warren were highly popular in their home states, but each refused to campaign in the primaries, which limited their chances of winning the nomination. Their supporters, however, hoped that in the event of a Dewey-Taft-Stassen deadlock, the convention would turn to their man as a compromise candidate. General MacArthur, the famous war hero, was especially popular among conservatives. Since he was serving in Japan as the
Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers occupying that nation, he was unable to campaign for the nomination. He did make it known, however, that he would accept the GOP nomination if it were offered to him, and some conservative Republicans hoped that by winning a primary contest he could prove his popularity with voters. They chose to enter his name in the Wisconsin primary. His candidacy was enthusiastically supported by
William Randolph Hearst in all of his newspapers. The "surprise" candidate of 1948 was Stassen, a liberal from Minnesota. In 1938, Stassen had been elected governor of Minnesota at the age of 31; he resigned as governor in 1943 to serve in the wartime Navy. In 1945 he served on the committee that created the
United Nations. Stassen was widely regarded as the most liberal of the Republican candidates, yet during the primaries he was criticized for being vague on many issues. Stassen stunned Dewey and MacArthur in the Wisconsin primary; Stassen's surprise victory virtually eliminated General MacArthur, whose supporters had made a major effort on his behalf. Stassen defeated Dewey again in the Nebraska primary, thus making him the new frontrunner. He then made the strategic mistake of trying to beat Taft in Ohio, Taft's home state. Stassen believed that if he could defeat Taft in his home state, Taft would be forced to quit the race and most of Taft's delegates would support him instead of Dewey. Taft defeated Stassen in Ohio, and Stassen earned the hostility of the party's conservatives. Even so, Stassen was still leading Dewey in the polls for the upcoming Oregon primary. Dewey, however, realized that losing another primary would end his chances at the nomination, and he decided to make an all-out effort in Oregon. In April 1948, Dewey sent Paul Lockwood, one of his top aides, to build a strong grassroots organization in the state. Working with $150,000 sent by Dewey's powerful New York political organization (three times the previous record spent in an Oregon primary), Lockwood paid "for 126 billboards, hundreds of sixty-second radio spots on every station in the state, and half-hour broadcasts each noon... The daily
Portland Oregonian carried five Dewey advertisements a day." Dewey also extensively campaigned in Oregon, spending three weeks in the state. He "invaded every hamlet, no matter how isolated, speaking at rural crossroads and shaking hands in hamburger stands. One journalist commented that Dewey was the greatest explorer of Oregon since
Lewis and Clark." Dewey also agreed to debate Stassen in Oregon on national radio. Held on May 17, 1948, it was the first-ever
radio debate between presidential candidates. The sole issue of the debate concerned whether to outlaw the
Communist Party of the United States. Stassen, despite his liberal reputation, argued in favor of outlawing the party, stating his belief that a network of Soviet-directed Communist spies "within the U.S. demanded immediate, and punitive, response... Why did Dewey oppose such a ban? Stassen wanted to know." "We must not coddle Communism with legality", Stassen insisted. Dewey – while criticizing Communist totalitarianism and Soviet actions in the Cold War – still forcefully argued against banning the Communist Party: "This outlawing idea is nothing new... for thousands of years despots have tortured, imprisoned, killed, and exiled their opponents, and their governments have always fallen into the dust." Dewey ended his turn in the debate by stating that "I am unalterably, wholeheartedly, and unswervingly against any scheme to write laws outlawing people because of their religious, political, social, or economic ideas. I am against it because it is a violation of the Constitution of the United States and the Bill of Rights... I am against it because I know from a great many years of experience in law enforcement that the proposal wouldn't work. Stripped to its naked essentials... this is nothing but the method of Hitler and Stalin. It is thought control... an attempt to beat down ideas with a club. It is a surrender of everything we believe in." Four days after the debate, Dewey defeated Stassen in the Oregon primary. From this point forward, the New York governor had the momentum he needed to win his party's nomination for a second straight time.
Republican Convention The
1948 Republican National Convention was held in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the first presidential convention to be shown on national television. At this time, there were 27 television stations in full operation in the U.S. and an estimated 350,000 TV sets in the whole country. As the convention opened, Dewey was believed to have a large lead in the delegate count. His campaign managers, such as
Herbert Brownell Jr.,
Edwin Jaeckle, and
J. Russell Sprague, were "as skillful a group of operators as ever manipulated a convention... it was said at the convention that the Dewey forces "could have won even with Taft" as their candidate." His main opponent, Senator Taft, was hobbled by an ineffective campaign team that one writer called "bumblers", and another historian noted that Taft's campaign manager, Ohio Congressman
Clarence J. Brown, "seemed no match for Herbert Brownell... while the Dewey forces were busy flattering delegates and hinting at promises of patronage, Brown was still worrying about such mundane matters as hotel rooms and seats in the gallery for his friends." Taft and Stassen, Dewey's leading opponents, met in Taft's hotel suite to plan a "stop-Dewey" movement. A key obstacle soon developed, however, as both men refused to unite behind a single candidate to oppose Dewey: "The essence of their impasse was simple. Neither Stassen nor Taft hated Dewey enough to withdraw [in favor of the other], and neither man thought he could get his delegates to follow if he did." After the second round of balloting, Dewey was only 33 votes short of victory. Taft then called Stassen and urged him to withdraw from the race and endorse him as Dewey's main opponent. When Stassen refused, Taft wrote a concession statement and had it read to the convention at the start of the third ballot; at this point the other candidates also dropped out, and Dewey was then nominated unanimously by
acclamation. Dewey's campaign team originally wanted Illinois Governor
Dwight Green to be his running mate, but the opposition of Colonel
Robert R. McCormick, the powerful publisher of the
Chicago Tribune, nixed his chances. Abels wrote that Dewey's decision to deny Halleck the vice-presidential bid "may have been a fateful one... Halleck with his forceful personality might have changed the tone of the Dewey campaign, and certainly the issue of the record of the GOP-controlled Eightieth Congress would have to have been met heads on." Instead, Dewey chose popular governor (and future
Chief Justice)
Earl Warren of California as his running mate. Following the convention, most political experts in the
news media rated the Republican ticket as an almost-certain winner over the Democrats.
Progressive Party nomination Vito Marcantonio (left) with former
Vice President Henry A. Wallace at
New York City's "Lucky Corner" on election eve, November 1, 1948 Meanwhile, the Democratic Party fragmented. A new
Progressive Party (the name had been used earlier by
Theodore Roosevelt in
1912 and
Robert M. La Follette in
1924) was created afresh in 1948, with the nomination of
Henry A. Wallace, who had served as
Secretary of Agriculture,
Vice President of the United States, and
Secretary of Commerce under Franklin D. Roosevelt. In 1946, President Truman fired Wallace as Secretary of Commerce when Wallace publicly opposed Truman's firm moves to counter the
Soviet Union in the
Cold War. Wallace's 1948 platform opposed the Cold War, including the
Marshall Plan and
Truman Doctrine. The Progressives proposed stronger government regulation and control of
Big Business. They also campaigned to end discrimination against blacks and women, backed a minimum wage, and called for the elimination of the
House Un-American Activities Committee, which was investigating the possibility of
communist spies within the government and labor unions. Wallace and his supporters charged that the committee was violating the
civil liberties of government workers and labor unions. The Progressives also generated a great deal of controversy because of the widespread belief that they were secretly controlled by Communists who were more loyal to the
Soviet Union than the United States. Wallace himself denied being a Communist, but he repeatedly refused to disavow their support and, at one point, was quoted as saying that the "Communists are the closest thing to the early Christian martyrs."
Walter Reuther, the president of the influential
United Auto Workers union, strongly opposed Wallace's candidacy, stating that "people who are not sympathetic with democracy in America are influencing him."
Philip Murray, the president of the
Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), stated in April 1948 that "the Communist Party is directly responsible for the creation of the third party [Progressive Party] in the United States." This revelation—including direct quotes from the letters—led to much ridicule of Wallace in the national press. The Progressive Party Convention, which was also held in Philadelphia, was a highly contentious affair; several famous newspaper journalists, such as
H. L. Mencken and
Dorothy Thompson, publicly accused the Progressives of being covertly controlled by Communists. The party's platform was drafted by
Lee Pressman, the convention secretary; he later admitted that he had been a member of the Communist party.
John Abt served as legal counsel to the convention's permanent chairman, Albert Fitzgerald; he also testified years later that he was a Communist. Tugwell later did disassociate himself from the Progressive Party and did not participate in Wallace's fall campaign. Senator
Glen H. Taylor from
Idaho, an eccentric figure who was known as a "singing cowboy" and who had ridden his horse "Nugget" up the steps of the
United States Capitol after winning election to the Senate in 1944, was named as Wallace's running mate. Although he was a member of the Democratic Party, Taylor accepted the Progressive Party's vice-presidential nomination, saying "I am not leaving the Democratic Party. It left me. Wall Street and the military have taken over the Democratic Party." After receiving the vice-presidential nomination, Taylor told reporters that there was a difference between "pink" Communists and "red" Communists. Taylor claimed that "pink" Communists would support the Wallace-Taylor ticket because they believed in a "peaceful revolution" to turn the government to left-wing beliefs, but "red" Communists would support the Republican ticket in the belief that they would cause another
Great Depression, which would give Communists the chance to take over the government. In the fall campaign, the Wallace-Taylor ticket made a Southern tour, where both Wallace and Taylor insisted on speaking to racially integrated audiences, in defiance of Southern custom and law at the time. In several North Carolina cities Wallace was hit by a total of "twenty-seven eggs, thirty-seven tomatoes, six peaches, and two lemons." When he left the state he announced: "As Jesus Christ said, if at any time they will not listen to you willingly, then shake the dust off from your feet and go elsewhere." He ate only in unsegregated restaurants, traveled with a black secretary, and in Mississippi had to be escorted by police for protection. His aide Clark Foreman admitted that Wallace wanted to stir up controversy for the publicity it would receive in more liberal areas in the North and West. As the campaign progressed, however, Wallace's crowds thinned and his standing in the polls dropped. Wallace was hurt by the successful effort of labor unions to keep their members in the Democratic column, and by controversial statements from Progressives supporting "appeasement with Russia." Wallace himself attacked
Winston Churchill as a "racist" and "imperialist", and Senator Taylor earned criticism for a speech in which he claimed that the "Nazis are running the U.S. government. So why should Russia make peace with them? If I were a Russian... I would not agree to anything... we are aggressively preparing for war." Wallace's support in polling fell from 11% in a January poll by
Roper Center for Public Opinion Research to 6% by June and 4% by October. Wallace traveled over 55,000 miles during the campaign. The Wallace-Taylor ticket finished in fourth place in the election, winning 1,157,328 votes (2.4%). This was only slightly less than the States' Rights Party, but the Progressive Party received no electoral votes.
States' Rights Democratic Party nomination Southern Democrats had become increasingly disturbed over President Truman's support of civil rights, particularly following his executive order racially integrating the U.S. armed forces and a civil rights message he sent to Congress in February 1948. At the Southern Governor's Conference in Wakulla Springs, Florida, on February 6, Mississippi Governor
Fielding Wright proposed the formation of a new third party to protect
racial segregation in the South. On May 10, 1948, the governors of the eleven states of the former Confederacy, along with other high-ranking Southern officials, met in
Jackson, Mississippi, to discuss their concerns about the growing civil rights movement within the Democratic Party. At the meeting, South Carolina Governor
Strom Thurmond criticized President Truman for his civil rights agenda, and the governors discussed ways to oppose it. The Southern Democrats who had walked out of the Democratic National Convention to protest the civil rights platform approved by the convention, and supported by Truman, promptly met at
Municipal Auditorium in
Birmingham, Alabama, on July 17, 1948, and formed yet another political party, which they named the
States' Rights Democratic Party. More commonly known as the "Dixiecrats", the party's main goal was continuing the policy of racial segregation in the South and the
Jim Crow laws that sustained it. Governor Thurmond, who had led the walkout, became the party's presidential nominee after the convention's initial favorite,
Arkansas Governor
Benjamin Laney, withdrew his name from consideration. Governor Wright of Mississippi received the vice-presidential nomination. The Dixiecrats had no chance of winning the election themselves, since they could not get on the ballot in enough states to win the necessary electoral votes. Their strategy was to take enough Southern states from Truman to force the election into the
United States House of Representatives under the provisions of the
Twelfth Amendment, where they could then extract concessions from either Truman or Dewey on racial issues in exchange for their support. Even if Dewey won the election outright, the Dixiecrats hoped that their defection would show that the Democratic Party needed Southern support in order to win national elections, and that this fact would weaken the pro-civil rights movement among Northern and Western Democrats. The Dixiecrats were weakened, however, when most Southern Democratic leaders (such as Governor
Herman Talmadge of Georgia and "Boss"
E. H. Crump from Tennessee) refused to support the party. Despite being an incumbent president, Truman was not placed on the ballot in Alabama. In the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina, the party was able to be labeled as the main Democratic Party ticket on the local ballots on election night. Outside of these four states, it was only listed as a third-party ticket. Smith's name appeared on ballots in 17 states. ==General election==