For the rest of
his life George McGovern, who had been a Wallace follower and attended the
Progressive Convention insisted that not only was Wallace not a communist but
that 95 percent of the delegates were ‘church people and right out of the soil
of America’.
This was not the
opinion of journalists. Hearst columnist George Dixon reported: “I am aware it
is not cricket to dwell upon the physical infirmities of people, but I have
never seen so many obvious defectives gathered together before.” They insisted
on going into dining rooms unproperly attired where the dress code demanded
formal wear and tried to force entry. They seemed determine to cause a fight in
elevators whenever they got a chance. Alistair Cooke, reporting for the
Manchester Guardian, said that the men dressed like emancipated clerks in Atlantic
City or fledgling Los Angelenos. “ Both men were appalled by them.
The speakers at
the convention including Leo Isacson, who said the new nation of Israel would ‘commence
the affair of making itself submit to Anglo-American tutelage. Their addresses.
All three minutes, were speeches on ‘the arts’, the Negro’, Women and Science.”
The keynote address was delivered by Charles Howard, a longtime Republican, a
citizen of Iowa – and had lost his license to practice law for six months because
of misappropriation of funds.
3240 delegates
assembled in a conventional hall to a half-empty gallery. One police sergeant
joked that half of those present were FBI agents checking on Communists.
H.L. Mencken, present
for the entire thing, observed that while he didn’t think the affair was being
maneuvered from the Kremlin he added that there were ‘not many dark faces
spotted in the hall, no Jewish faces, Chinese, Malays, Eskimos or Arabs.” In
other words this party of the people was populated by mostly artists and
dilettantes.
When this
article was published a member of the Maryland delegation offered a resolution condemning
Mencken’s reporting and his ‘Hitlerite references to the people of this
convention…The fighting spirit of equality is entirely lost to Mencken…He Red
baits, Jew Baits, and Negro baits.” (The delegate who put forth this motion was
an overt Communist.)
The resolution
got nowhere because as a Philadelphia newspaper observed: “Rumors spread that
they decided if there were to be any martyrs to come out of the convention they
would be Wallace and Taylor. No mere reporter was to be wafted off to glory on
the wings of martyrdom.”
While he was
initially outraged Mencken would ultimately laugh it off. “I’m only sorry the
resolution was not passed.” He was one of the few people at the convention who
was treating it with the seriousness it deserved.
The nomination
was practically a family affair: Glen Taylor’s nomination was seconded by his
sister and brother. It was followed by a fundraising affair at Shibe Park,
where the moribund Philadelphia Phillies and A’s played baseball and was about
as much fun as most of those games were. A band led by Pete Seeger struggled to
be heard. Vito Marcantonio, the original Wallace, gave what would be an unintelligible speech. (The
sound system barely worked). Glen Taylor’s speech in the aftermath of his
nomination was followed by a rendition of ‘When You Were Sweet Sixteen’ sung
horribly by the Taylor family.
Wallace’s speech
was little more than a formation of his old platitudes, excoriating Truman and
blaring down the Republican Party. Like Thomas Dewey in his acceptance speech,
however, he spoke in generalities on domestic policy. However, he made an exception
for Germany and the crisis in Berlin. He assured those in the stadium and
listening over the radio: ‘IF I were President, there would be no crisis in
Berlin today.”
The nominations
took place before the platform was finally adapted at the end of the
convention. The New York Times compared it line by line to the Communist Party
platform – and found many similarities. The platform denounced the Nationalist
movement of Chang Kai-Shek, opposed the Marshall Plan, damned HUAC and advocated
the creation of a Cabinet level department of Culture. The party agreed to supported
Moscow’s refusal to recognize the state of Macedonia entirely in lockstep. Even
when a minority amendment was proposed simply not giving a blanket endorsement
of the Soviet Union, was ‘interpreted as an insinuation against a foreign ally.”
The man who proposed the Amendment was shouted down, led off-stage and then
nervously said majority rule would be fine. The Chairman had already ruled there
was not going to be a vote on the amendment.
In every possible
way the Progressive Party convention was taken on the model of the leftist
model that we see reflected today: refusing to listen to any dissent, taking a
criticism of them as something that needed to be publicly excoriated and with a
major presence of prominent celebrities.
One of the ironies
of the 1948 campaign was that both major parties were in bipartisan accord over
the international situation. During 1948, what was unfolding Germany and Berlin
was becoming so dangerous that James Forrestal was certain that World War III
might break out any day. Yet despite having a major issue to campaign on Thomas
Dewey did not make it an issue of the fall campaign. In part it was because of
past experience, four years earlier he had tried to make failures at Pearl
Harbor a campaign issue against FDR and it had backfired. On July 24, Dewey spoke
alongside Arthur Vandenberg and John Foster Dulles and told Americans that: ‘We
shall not allow domestic partisan irritations to divert us from indispensable unity.”
Wallace was the only candidate willing to challenge Truman on foreign policy –
and because of the clear links to Communism, no one could take him seriously.
Perhaps the most
genuine move of Wallace during the fall campaign was when he had a campaign
tour through the South. Since Reconstruction the South had been solidly
Democratic and in all the years since no standard bearer from either party had
bothered to campaign there. Considering that what votes weren’t going to go to
Truman would almost certainly go to Strom Thurmond’s Dixiecrat Party, it seemed
a futile cause.
Wallace was
determined to do so. There was the calculation that if he did so he would reinvigorate
his African-American support in the North, perhaps take votes from Truman. But
he genuinely believed that the inequities of Jim Crow needed to be challenged
by a man of national stature. It was a noble gesture that one can’t believe today’s
leftists who disdain the South’s existence would have considered making.
Wallace spent
two weeks in the South, addressing 30 integrated audiences in 28 cities in
seven southern states. There was immense outrage from Southerners. In North Carolina,
one of his bodyguards was cut eight times with a knife – and threatened with
arrest from the police. Wallace and his party were pelted garbage. In
Burlington, a father held an eight year old on his shoulders so the boy could
fling tomatoes and ice cream at him. An outraged Wallace placed his hands on an
elderly resident with a livid look on his face. A supporter described what
happened next:
“…As suddenly as
that emotion had been aroused, something miraculous happened. His grip relaxed.
The anger went off his face….And with a composed gesture that seemed almost messianic,
he waved to the crowd. ‘Goodbye friends. I’ll see you again.”
He received
protests and threats in Alabama and Louisiana. And some of his speeches were the
most genuine of the campaign. A journalist wrote that: “he said a good many
things that needed to be said about the brotherhood of man. He may even have
jolted the complacency of a few citizens who never doubted that the lord preferred
them to those born with darker skins. He established in at least a dozen places
that unsegregated meetings could be held without civil war.”
It was the moral
highpoint of the campaign. Almost everything else was a disaster. The lion’s share
of Wallace’s most prominent supporter were celebrities past and present. They
included S.J. Perlman, Aaron Copland, Linus Pauling, I.F. Stone, Clifford
Odets, Frank Lloyd Wright, Arthur Miller and the young Leonard Bernstein. But
none of this could relieve Wallace’s many blunders prior to the campaign and
his continued embrace of Communists during it. It didn’t help that HUAC was now
in full force and they would occasionally bring in Wallace campaigners – who chose
to take the Fifth.
Even some of
Wallace’s early followers began to realize just how Communist he was. Lillian Hellman
lunched with Wallace and he asked her if much of the central core of his
campaign was Communist. She told him it was true. “I thought you must have
known that. The hard, dirty work in the office is being done by them and a good
deal of the bad advice you’re getting is given by the higher ups. I don’t think
they mean any harm, they’re stubborn men.” Wallace said. “I see.”
Nothing changed.
Hellman eventually had to chaperone Wallace’s wife, Ilo around. Ilo had little
use for Communists, Jews, or even her husband’s campaign. For a month Hellman
hosted her at her house in Martha Vineyard to basically shut her up. In
October, she fled the campaign to go to Yugoslavia to witness the premiere of
her play The Little Foxes in Belgrade. She went to interview Marshall
Tito about his break with Moscow. He wanted to ask her about Henry Wallace.
Always at the
heart of the campaign was a question they could never easily answered: did it
make sense to punish Democrats only to replace them with retrograde Republicans?
The Progressive Party decided to oppose many very liberal Democratic nominee
for elected office, including Helen Gahagan Douglas in California, Minnesota
Senate hopeful Hubert Humphrey and Illinois nominee for governor Adlai Stevenson.
On September 21,
Beanie Baldwin told major supporters that they would be backing Chester Bowles for
governor in Connecticut and that they might back Douglas in California.
Wallace, who was next to speak, openly told them that they couldn’t endorse Bowles
which led many to think they had split. On September 30, thirteen Progressive
candidates withdrew from key congressional races, including Bowles, Humphrey
and Douglas. Even before October began, the new party was raising the white
flag.
When the
election was over and Harry Truman had been the surprise winner it was a
disaster in every possible way. They received little more than 1.1 million votes.
They’d never had anything resembling a strategy for victory, unlike the
Dixiecrats. It was telling the States Right Party, which was on the ballot in
just thirteen states to Wallace’s 50 gathered slightly more popular votes than
Wallace: Thurmond got 1,176,125 to Wallace’s 1,157,326. The Thurmond campaign
carried 4 Southern States with 39 electoral votes. The lion’s share of Wallace’s
votes were from New York, where he got nearly half a million votes and California,
where he got two percent. All his campaign accomplished was to take enough
votes away from Truman in New York and Michigan to give them to Dewey.
The consequences
were infinitely worse for progressives long-term. All they had wanted was to
defeat Harry Truman. The cost came to their ranks in both the Democratic party
and labor. Worse by goading Truman to counterattack by labeling his
anti-Communist protocols which would lead pretty much directly to the McCarthy
era. And for decades many on the left would be tarred with the label of
Communism.
In 1950 when
Helen Gaghan Douglas attempted to run for the Senate in California, she was
labeled the ‘Pink Lady’ by a 37 year old two term Congressman who had shot to prominence
during the meetings of HUAC in August of 1948. In part this Congressman used Douglas’
association with the Wallace campaign to label her with Communist leanings by
association.
Less then three
years later Richard Nixon would be sworn in as Vice President.
In the final
section of this article I will summarize the commonalities between all three failed
Progressive campaigns for President and what they haven’t learned from
them in all that time.
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