Failed Progressive Presidential Campaigns Part 6

The Disastrous Convention And Campaign — And How Wallace’s Run Did Far More Damage to Their Cause Then They Could Have Imagined

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 long, 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.