A new study of the 1948 election that has long been called the
greatest upset in American political history. Donaldson,
(History/Xavier Univ.) provides persuasive analyses of postwar
politics, the tactics of contending political parties that marked
the breakup of the old FDR New Deal coalition after WWII. To many
voters, "Plain Harry" Truman was a drastic letdown after the
charismatic and innovative FDR. Truman had little use for New
Dealers and was heard to call them "crackpots" and "the lunatic
fringe". He replaced the FDR cabinet with his political cronies and
old war buddies. Donaldson finds that only FDR could hold together
his unlikely coalition of leftists, liberals, aggressive labor
unions, conservative farmers, newly united northern
African-Americans, professionals, and right-wing southern white
supremacists. Truman walked a tightrope between these contending
forces. In addition, Donaldson points out that Republicans drew
away many old FDR voters who perceived the Yalta conference as a
sellout to the Soviet Union. The GaP captured Congress in the 1946
elections as Truman's popularity declined. All polls predicted a
Republican landslide in 1948. Truman found he couldn't please all
factions and decided to abandon the far leftists and the extreme
southern white supremacists, both of whom formed new parties led
respectively by Henry Wallace and Strom Thurmond. Truman's feisty
"whistle stop" train campaign and "give them hell, Harry" speeches
endeared him to millions of Americans In the west and south and in
large cities. He regained many lukewarm voters with no other place
to go except to the newly animated Harry. Donaldson argues that the
overconfident Dewey lost the election with his bland, boring
campaign speeches as much as Truman won it in a close popular vote.
An excellent history of a remarkable event in a tumultuous time in
America. (Kirkus Reviews)
" Fifty years ago Harry S. Truman pulled off the greatest upset
in U.S. political history. With his party split on both the left
and the right, and facing a formidable Republican opponent in New
York governor Thomas E. Dewey, the Missourian was thought to have
little chance of remaining in the White House. But politics in the
postwar years were changing dramatically. Truman and his advisers
successfully read those changes: their strategy focused on building
a coalition of organized labor, African Americans in large northern
cities, and traditional liberals--and ignoring protests from the
conservative South. Donaldson argues that Dewey did nearly as much
to lose the election as Truman did to win it. Dewey entered the
campaign so overconfident that he refused to confront Truman on the
issues. The Republicans, certain of a mandate from the public after
the midterm elections of 1946, prepared to disassemble the New
Deal. Yet they suffered from even more severe internal division
than the Democrats. The 1948 presidential campaign was a watershed
event in the history of American politics. It encompassed Truman's
rousing ""Give 'em Hell Harry"" speeches and intriguing
behind-the-scenes political maneuvering. It was the first election
after Roosevelt's death and the last before the advent of
television. It marked the new political prominence of African
American voters and organized labor, as well as the South's
declining influence over the Democratic Party.
General
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