An Optimistic Opposition is Grounded in Historical Knowledge
How 1948 was prologue to national realignments in American Politics, even foreshadowing 2024
The Voters’ Choice, 2024, for President of the United States:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ud1mJcTY1wQ
A wide range of Americans, the GOP boasts, the most diverse GOP electorate ever, have chosen a man whose campaign degrades and smears minorities, Latinos, immigrants as “poisoning our blood” (the Nazi Blut und Erde — “Blood and Soil”), as well as the obscene smear of lawful immigrant Haitians with the Blood Libel*, and degrading American citizens in the American Territory of Puerto Rico as “garbage floating in the ocean:”
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* The Blood Libel is explained here: https://www.adl.org/resources/backgrounder/blood-libel-false-incendiary-claim-against-jews?psafe_param=1&gad_source=1&gclid=Cj0KCQiAire5BhCNARIsAM53K1jXI0tqsjPpHSDOocJpYpZ5nHc_lWUb7gAZH9hao--l4U3ZZ78LqAQaAi2gEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds JD Vance emphatically emphasized a version of this obscene smear against peaceful Haitians, leading to violence. See here: https://www.npr.org/2024/09/15/nx-s1-5113140/vance-false-claims-haitian-migrants-pets
When one compares the results of 2024 with those of the prior two elections, 2016 and 2020, the Democrats have lost, and the Republicans have gained some small, but measurable inroads among minorities.
Which puzzles Armando, because Trump/JD-Vance are now the heads of the Republican Party, and the top of the Republican Party engages in incendiary and violent rhetoric that baits minority races and ethnic groups, and even religion.
And JD Vance pretends — ah, shucks, naw, you are exaggerating, I (Vance) am merely repeating reports (sic!) locally, the Haitians did steal pets and . . .
This vile, obscene Blood Libel had been twisted in anti-Semitic Europe over centuries from the Middle Ages to modern times, creating a bigotry that inflamed into hatred and the genocidal holocaust under the Third Reich.
The Blood Libel found its way in 2024 with Yale-Law alumnus JD Vance being the worst, racist arsonist with the fire-accelerant of white-racist demagoguery.
Make no mistake. The intent, the whole purpose of inflammatory and obscene racist smears is to incite violence, and make it vague enough that Trump and Vance can stand at cowardly distance and claim, “Oh, We didn’t cause the bomb threats to Springfield, Ohio, not us, we were just reporting because the mainstream Press would not . . . “ The Joseph Goebbels lie that influences the credulous simply because the liar is willing to repeat and repeat the lie as if he were practicing hypnosis.
And so the neo-fascist race-baiting went on to a surprise 2024 election result.
Why?
I’ll let others comment at length. I was surprised.
Before we move on, let us be clear.
Joyful Warrior Kamala Harris ran a powerful, charismatic campaign that thrilled me with as much promise and hope as did the 1960 campaign inspire in the then 12-year-old Armando with John Fitzgerald Kennedy and not less with Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy with the prospect of a New Frontier, where the torch was transferred to the very first President born in the 20th century.
Kamala Harris was tasked and taxed with overload to perform in a mere 107 days what all other candidates allot over two full years.
And Kamala Harris remains my hope for 2028, for with her, I commit that we shall continue the fight for civil rights and the dignity and equality of each person.
We will fight. We will fight within the bounds of law and civility. We will, in the words of the greatly missed good and dear man, John Lewis, “Create Good Trouble.”
I am proud of Kamala Harris, a great prosecutor, a State Attorney General, a U.S. Senator (D-CA), and Vice President, a statesman with a very substantive program, the Honorable Kamala Harris is supremely fit to be our President, I wish with all my heart it had turned out so, and I hope fervently for the leadership of Kamala Harris to restore equity and civil rights in 2028.
Kamala Harris has the qualities of statesmanship, the professional experience, and the intellectual prowess to earn her right to be called a leading Statesman in America.
Kamala Harris represents the best in the heritage of The Civil Rights Movement — The Great Moral Movement of Our Time.
The Great Moral Movement of our Time — the Civil Rights Movement — has framed my life, and I am 76 years old.
Even the year of my birth, 1948, was a great Presidential campaign that hinged greatly upon the Civil Rights Movement.
1948 may sound distant and even emit some semi-rural charm, but the passions of the public that year are remarkably similar to today.
Easily the expected winner of the Presidency that year would have been a formidable, highly gifted man, Thomas E. Dewey (24 March 1902 - 16 March 1971).
Had Governor Dewey been elected in 1948, he would have served as the very first President born in the 20th Century. Instead, we had to wait another 12 years, when JFK unseated the Victorians.
By 1948, the vigorous and young Governor Thomas E. Dewey (R-NY) was easily a national figure, an internationalist and interventionist, who supported the Marshall Plan — a plan by the distinguished Secretary of State, retired General George Marshall, to economically restore Europe post war from ubiquitous war ruins and threatened hunger.
Most of the Republicans had been isolationist, turned after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, but a Conservative leader, Congressman Robert Taft (R-OH) succeeded to great extent in returning the party post-war to its traditional isolationism.
Not so, Thomas E. Dewey, who frustrated Robert Taft at every turn, finally obtaining his own second Presidential Nomination (Dewey had opposed Roosevelt in 1944), and putting the election on an internationalist footing, and Mr. Dewey was friendly towards civil rights.
Thomas E. Dewey became a nationally famous prosecutor in New York City after Dewey left prosperous private practice as a litigation attorney — he had been offered by no less than John Foster Dulles in 1937 a very cool $150,000.00 per year to join the prestigious law firm of Sullivan and Cromwell, Attorneys-at-Law in New York. (R.N. Smith, opus infra citatum at p. 19)
(Think for a moment about how much $150K in 1937 would be in 2024 dollars!)
Thomas E. Dewey had put away some of New York’s most notorious gangland figures, to the extent that he received death threats in writing and on the telephone.
When Mr. Dewey was warned that he would be shot one particular evening, Mr. Dewey determined to leave his office at the accustomed time, and to drive the hour or so to his country estate — away from the bustle of the big city — at night with the lights on in the cabin of the car. So defiant was Mr. Dewey against the forces of darkness. (R.N. Smith, opus infra citatum at p. 30.)
Thomas E. Dewey was Governor of New York whose accomplishments were hailed in the standard biography,
(Thomas Dewey’s) innovations were not limited to technique (i.e., use of the new medium, TV, for campaign ads). Under governor Dewey, New York is the first state in the nation to enact laws prohibiting racial or religious discrimination in employment and education. His administration has taken the lead in combatting tuberculosis, heart disease, and cancer; blazed new trails in curing the mentally ill; and created a women’s council to insure that the Governor’s law guaranteeing equal pay for equal work is more than an admirable, futile gesture. . . . As he is fond of telling audiences, government can be progressive and solvent at the same time, can feel with its heart what it knows in its head. He also quotes Jefferson: “The whole art of Government consists in being honest.”
(Emphasis added.)
Richard Norton Smith, Thomas E. Dewey and his Times (1982, A Touchstone Book, Simon & Schuster, Inc., New York, ISBN: 0-671-41741-X, 703 pp.) at pages 30-31.
While Smith characterizes Harry S. Truman’s language on the trail as “scalding,” Mr. Dewey was well known for dignified, eloquent speech, that H.L. Mencken remarked that Mr. Dewey “speaks the best language of anyone in public office.” Ibid. at p. 24.
So, while the Republican Congress may have been represented by a vast Conservative wing, symbolized by Robert Taft of Ohio, the Presidential Candidate, Thomas E. Dewey, was a significant statesman in his own right, a man of high gifts and honor, and one who promoted civil and equal rights in his own state.
In 1948, one has inevitably to consider the position of the South, because that region was a major factor in FDR’s unprecedented election four times to the Presidency.
And in the South, a rising figure was the new Governor of South Carolina, Strom Thurmond.
Mr. Thurmond took office as Governor in January 1947.
Mr. Thurmond initially had won favorable reviews in the national press as a possible progressive voice in the South, in large part because of the then-rare call by Governor Thurmond to investigate and prosecute a recent lynching, which action starred in a lead article in the 2 June 1947 edition of Life Magazine:
The Life Magazine article showed photographs of the 31 defendants — 26 had planned the lynching, another 5 had tagged along.
Their trial lasted nine days, and Life Magazine praised the correctness of the prosecution and the bench, under Judge J. Robert Martin, Jr., during the proceedings, under Judge J. Robert Martin, Jr.
Life Magazine characterized the events as follows:
Lynch Trial Makes Southern History
In Greenville, S.C., a progressive textile of 35,000, a new, unprecedented chapter was written last week (i.e., the week before 2 June 1947) in the South’s violent and secretive history of race relations. For the first time, the violent ugly story of a brutal lynching was put in the legal records. In the courtroom were hauled 26 men who had admitted to being members of the lynch mob, plus five others they had accused of accompanying them. For nine days they were tried, in all seriousness, on charges of murder, conspiracy and being accessories before and after the fact.
The trial did not end in a way to satisfy those who believe that democracy means what it says, regardless of the color of a man’s skin. The jury, after hearing the 26 signed statements, after hearing no word of defense testimony, and almost no word of defense argument except some old-fashioned pleas for white supremacy — voted in a mere five and a quarter hours to acquit the defendants. Then, as soon as the trial was declared ended and the judge had departed the courtroom, pandemonium broke loose when friends, relatives and just plain spectators congratulated the defendants.
But history had been made nonetheless. At the urging of Governor Strom Thurmond, white officers of the law had done their best to investigate the lynch murder of a Negro. * * *
Here is Life Magazine’s picture of the post-trial pandemonium and the universal congratulation of the defendants:
Source: Life Magazine, 2 June 1947, pp. 27 et seq.:
But the nation was soon to see that Mr. Thurmond was no progressive.
Mr. Thurmond was well known locally in little Edgefield, SC to have had an affair with an African-American woman who bore him a daughter, whom Mr. Thurmond silently supported, all the while cowardly spearheading her oppression.
That year, a young Minnesota Mayor and future Senator introduced for the first time a Civil Rights Plank for the Democratic Party Platform.
The Civil Rights plank raised outrage in the segregationist South, and it was the same Governor Strom Thurmond, representing his state at the Convention, who staged a massive walk-out of the convention with other Southern segregationists.
Governor Strom Thurmond did not merely walk out of the Convention. He formed a Dixiecrat party, named the States' Rights Democratic Party, in reality representing racial segregation, but masquerading as “States Rights,” which, after all, are embodied in the Tenth Amendment to the US. Constitution:
Amendment X: States' rights
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
The South had been a key part of the grand FDR coalition.
From 1932, the Democratic ticket, on the strength of the Great Depression, and subsequently World War II, had completed an unprecedented accomplishment of winning four terms in a row, through a coalition nationally of labor, farmers, and, post-Reconstruction, the reliably Democratic South.
It turns out Life Magazine the year earlier was premature in its assessment of Governor Strom Thurmond as a progressive, because in this year the Governor not only had stormed out of the Party Convention to protest the Civil Rights plank of Congressman Hubert Horatio Humphrey, but . . .
Governor Strom Thurmond ran on his own for President, basically, for the South, on the platform of the States' Rights Democratic Party, taking with him virtually the entire South on Election Day, amputating a leg of FDR’s powerful electoral coalition, thereby foreseeing the ultimate direction of the South when, almost 20 years later, LBJ was impelled by the powerful realities of the Civil Rights Movement to muscle through the Civil Rights laws of 1964 and 1965.
As Democrats belatedly turned toward Civil Rights, the South rebelled.
A lot had changed in the Democratic Party in 1948.
During the late 1930s, Franklin Delano Roosevelt had not dared to take up anti-lynching legislation, as was urged by that truly great Statesman (whom Armando remembers as a living Statesman), Eleanor Roosevelt.
FDR would not dare make lynching a Federal crime — an epidemic at the time, and not just in the South, for this crime was witnessed by a young woman in Marion, Indiana in the late ‘20s or early ‘30s, according to our own family lore.
But by 1948, there was movement toward Civil Rights even within the Democratic Party.
In July 1948, President Truman had integrated both the Federal workforce and the military.
A young Senatorial candidate from Minnesota was to symbolize the future leadership of Democrats in civil rights.
A young man, the Mayor of Minneapolis, now standing for election to the U.S. Senate to represent Minnesota, Hubert Horatio Humphrey (whose all-too-short life spanned 27 May 1911 to 13 January 1978) introduced the Civil Rights Plank to the Democratic Party Platform in 1948:
In his address to the 1948 Democratic National Convention, Hubert Humphrey—then the 37-year-old mayor of Minneapolis—passionately implored the Democratic Party to “get out of the shadow of states' rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.”
By so publicly championing civil rights, Humphrey paved the way for the party to adopt the civil rights plank to its platform, despite facing fierce opposition from some party members. This landmark decision marked a turning point in American history, laying the foundation for progressive policies and advancements in the fight for equality and justice.
The historical context of Humphrey's speech cannot be underestimated. It took place during a time of profound social and political transformation, as the nation grappled with the consequences of racial segregation and continued systemic discrimination.
Humphrey's call to action resonated far beyond the convention hall, capturing the hopes and aspirations of millions of Americans. His commitment to civil rights continued during his career in the U.S. Senate, where he led the fight for passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Humphrey called its passage “one of the landmarks of my life.”
https://www.hhh.umn.edu/news/dean-reflections-legacy-hubert-humphreys-1948-civil-rights-speech
So, in 1948, the Democrats adopted a Civil Rights Plank and lost the South to the States' Rights Democratic Party.
Here is the plank, adopted at the 1948 Democratic Convention, a draft by Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Minnesota’s young Senator-elect:
The Democratic Party is responsible for the great civil rights gains made in recent years in eliminating unfair and illegal discrimination based on race, creed or color,
The Democratic Party commits itself to continuing its efforts to eradicate all racial, religious and economic discrimination.
We again state our belief that racial and religious minorities must have the right to live, the right to work, the right to vote, the full and equal protection of the laws, on a basis of equality with all citizens as guaranteed by the Constitution.
We highly commend President Harry S. Truman for his courageous stand on the issue of civil rights.
We call upon the Congress to support our President in guaranteeing these basic and fundamental American Principles: (1) the right of full and equal political participation; (2) the right to equal opportunity of employment; (3) the right of security of person; (4) and the right of equal treatment in the service and defense of our nation.[1]
We pledge ourselves to legislation to admit a minimum of 400,000 displaced persons found eligible for United States citizenship without discrimination as to race or religion. We condemn the undemocratic action of the Republican 80th
Congress in passing an inadequate and bigoted bill for this purpose, which law imposes no-American restrictions based on race and religion upon such admissions.
https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/1948-democratic-party-platform
The GOP had a candidate in Governor Dewey who, too, supported civil rights.
For the Statesman, Thomas E. Dewey, the 1948 scientific polls were extremely optimistic, putting a potential Electoral College vote for Mr. Dewey as high as 366 with a probable 4-million vote margin separating him from the probable loser, Mr. Truman.
The voter chose Truman.
In case one wonders how large a role Civil Rights played in the 1948 election, the final election map shows the effect in color:
Source: https://www.270towin.com/1948_Election/
Henry Wallace barely figured, but Mr. Wallace is himself a worthy figure in history deserving of his own study. In short, Henry Wallace was very liberal, even socialist, a strong opponent to Fascism/Nazism — especially within our Country (!!), who had previously served as Secretary of Agriculture, eventually serving as FDR’s Vice President, only to be rubbed out on a technicality from the Vice Presidency in 1944, when somewhat unexpectedly Harry S. Truman was nominated. Since I am a leftist, I am interested in pursuing more of the history of Henry Wallace.
But there was a red scare afoot in the 1940s. And Henry Wallace was suspected by J. Edgar Hoover of being linked with Soviet infiltration in our Government. (Let us not forget: Edgar Hoover also collected a large dossier on Eleanor Roosevelt, our First Lady!)
To put affiliations with Communism and the post-war red scare in some context, Soviets had been our critical ally in WWII, to the point where the great Gregory Peck played a heroic Soviet guerilla fighting against the invading Nazis in the 1944 classic, “Days of Glory.”
But however much the Soviet Union had been critical in defeating the Third Reich, until 1953, Joseph Stalin was its leader, and Joseph Stalin was a mass murderer of millions, 3.9 millions in Ukraine during the forced collectivization of 1931-1932 — the Holodomor — a memory that still brings chills of horror, as a breadbasket Ukraine was forced to massive famine.
See: https://www.history.com/news/ukrainian-famine-stalin
In the 1940s, the Republicans, under a new Congressman, who had been a naval officer in WWII, Dick Nixon dramatically staged Congressional hearings on Communists within the Government, bringing down a rising star in the State Department, Alger Hiss, through a semi-comic caper of microfilm hidden in a gourd in a Maryland pumpkin patch by Whittaker Chambers.
An ambitious Congressman, young Dick Nixon reveled in the publicity:
Rep. Richard M. Nixon (R-Calif.) views microfilm of State Department papers with Robert E. Stripling, chief investigator for the House Un-American Activities Committee, in Washington on Dec. 6, 1948. (AP)
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/12/02/pumpkin-papers-richard-nixon/
The Joke: Despite the dramatic political appearance, Mr. Nixon would not have been able to read the microfilm through a magnifying glass! The slides are so small as to require a microfiche reader, about the size of a medium TV screen, backlit.
So, in 1948, Armando is born, and on the national scale, the stage is set.
In the following years, Dick Nixon rose.
But so did Hubert Horatio Humphrey.
The Civil Rights Movement — The Great Moral Movement of Our Time — was well underway.
What wondrous leaders would come to Civil Rights during the next two decades — Rosa Parks, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X (misunderstood in his time), Medgar Evers, and the good, well loved man we lost recently, John Lewis, in whose honor we will continue to “make good trouble.”
But to go back to the theme of the 1948 Presidential election, the Dewey team had every reason to expect a massive victory in the November election.
But it was not to be. Truman won. In the Thomas Dewey household, 1948 was not mentioned again. Op. cit.
But Thomas Dewey had tremendous influence in politics in the next two decades, despite the loss.
Thomas E. Dewey opposed the isolationist and Conservative wing of the Republican Party in general, and Robert Taft in particular, and ensured the hero of D-Day, General Dwight David Eisenhower, would run — and easily win — in 1952.
It was Thomas Dewey, too, who led Ike to pick Dick Nixon.
Dick Nixon’s Checkers Speech is a point of hilarity in our national history that I think we’ll take up in the future.
And Strom Thurmond.
Strom Thurmond, founder of the States’ Rights Democratic Party in 1948, became the leading opponent to civil rights legislation in 1956 and 1964-1965, ultimately turning to the Republican Party once the Democrats had responded to the Civil Rights Movement.
Strom Thurmond accomplished the feat of being the first United States Senator to live beyond 100 years.
But, whatever his other qualities, Strom Thurmond’s bigotry formed part of the Systemic racism oppressing his own daughter.
Trump/Vance are Thurmond’s legitimate, white-racist heirs.
Truman’s victory brought us one of the most famous photographs in American political history:
https://www.trumanlibraryinstitute.org/dewey-defeats-truman/
Whereas in 2024, the heritage of racist Strom Thurmond is the winner, and this year’s photo finish is:
We endure, even in dissent, in creating Good Trouble — in loving memory of John Lewis.
We may lose a race, but righteousness, love for and the dignity and equality of each person is our way, and they will see us and they will hear us!
Thank you Armand Beede....may your tribe increase
This was almost TL:DR but I did my best! IMO the big realignment followed the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts of the mid-1960s, encouraged of course by Nixon's "southern strategy." (Why do I like so many others continue to put that in quotes? Damned if I know.) That also began the slide of the GOP into a party that at first looked like a close cousin to the Southern Democrats of yesteryear then post-Reagan became ever more dysfunctional, anti-democratic, and (dare I say it) fascist.
Compounding this is the general ignorance of the U.S. electorate about how "the economy" works and what forces affect it, i.e., that the president doesn't control it, though government (executive, legislative, and judiciary branches) can influence it, and since the Citizens United decision the judiciary has been influencing it much too much and not in a good way. And critical talk about the economy, including ideas like economic justice, is short-circuited and stifled by cries of socialism! communism! anti-Americanism! That's been going on since at least the late 19th century.
There seems to be widespread agreement that "the economy" was a major factor in the 2024 election, and Trump's victory. Given how limited the electorate's economic knowledge is (I'm being kind here), this is pretty horrifying. Add in how difficult it is to get accurate information about anything, even if you're highly motivated, and it looks even worse.