Essay on The Dixiecrat

As the Democratic right wing broke off to become Dixiecrats, so the left wing broke off to create the Progressive Party. It nominated Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace for president and Governor Glen Taylor of Idaho as vice president.

With both the right and left wings gone, President Truman was left with a shaky center and little hope for winning the election. This was accentuated by the fact that former New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey was the Republican candidate. Dewey was a popular, racket-busting district attorney, and all the polls showed him taking the election easily, and some of his potential appointees even bought houses in Washington (David, 1993).

The 1948 presidential campaign of Harry Truman has been dubbed one of the greatest political campaigns of the modern era. No one, Republican or Democrat gave incumbent President Truman any hope of defeating a Republican nominee especially Thomas E. Dewey, governor of New York. Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats), led by Senator Strom Thurmond, and Progressives, led by Henry Wallace, had splintered from the Democratic Party leaving a fractured and hopeless group searching for a saving grace in the '48 election. A stronger civil rights platform in the Democratic Party was the cause of this rift. Beginning with his 1948 State of the Union address, Truman quickly found that his ten month campaign would be long and hard (David, 1993). Truman and his entourage embarked upon a whistle-stop campaign of immense proportions traveling more than 21,000 miles, stopping in more than 250 cities, and delivering more than 300 speeches. Even with the nomination of his party behind him, none but Truman believed that the presidency could be won.

Magazines, newspapers, and pollsters had written him off. As November approached, no relief was given to the Truman campaign..................

ESSAY ON THE AMERICAS