The Real Third-Party Candidate in 1948 (It Wasn't Thurmond)

stumbled across this topic, quite by accident, please forgive the intrusion:

Last week, the New Republic did mention someone else's passing mention of him on TV. But the magazine didn't mention that when Henry A. Wallace decided to run in 1948, he had recently become editor of…. the New Republic. Why the eerie silence about Wallace, who was Vice-President of the United States during Franklin D. Roosevelt's third term (1941-1945) and became the 1948 presidential nominee of the Progressive Citizens of America party? ...Out of office, he fell into the Communists' grip by agreeing, after mysterious visits to him at The New Republic, to head their PCA ticket... Wallace stopped drawing distinctions. He kept denying Stalin's brutalities and the war-ravaged Soviet Union's imperialistic, nationalistic designs on Europe. He attacked the Truman Doctrine and even the Marshall Plan to rebuild Europe against Stalinist advances. When the Soviets blockaded West Berlin, Wallace even attacked Truman's airlift to keep it free. Wallace thus handed segregationists an excuse to link civil-rights activism with Communist subversion.

Sounds a little like the behavior, activities, and attitudes of a more recent figure, a former Attorney General of a powerful US president, both so-called Democrats...

George W. Bush will be reelected by a margin of at least ten per cent

NOT A PING LIST, merely posted to: aculeus; aristeides; davisfh; dighton; Eric in the Ozarks; Free the USA; genefromjersey; general_re; jalisco555; patton; writmeister; x

I went back to the original post ('02 I think) and picked this up.

"What's left of the party faithful now calls themselves 'Progressives' - same name Wallace's party used. Their aims are still about the same : splinter the Nation by setting factions against one another - something you may have noticed the major media networks also attempt..."

genefromjersey posted this reply and I believe that he is right on with his remarks. I concluded some time ago that there is little, if any, difference between the Democratic Party of late and the Communist Party of the Soviet era. Sad to say, there are members of my family who embrace the "progressives." I think, though, that these family members don't really have an ideology. They are driven by the "what can government do for me" and the "which party can best provide taxpayer largess to me" mentality. Sadly, that is the case with many Americans. And, this thinking will eventually destroy the American ethos.

Eric-

I'm a Republican but I've I've always been fascinated with Henry A Wallace.

You may find this hard to believe but in many ways he was ahead of the curve on many issues.

He was the first person to make a commercially viable corn hybrid available. Through his newspaper (Wallaces' Farmer) he taught farmers to practice conservation and showed them how to farm in a smart and efficient manner.

His foreign policy positions left a lot to be desired and many of his comments deservedly led him to be tagged as a Communist. In his life, he was a never a Communist but in his 1948 campaign, he never renounced the help of the Communist Party.

In his later years, he renounced the Progressive Party as a sham and said that he should have disavowed the assistance of Communist Paty members in his campaign.

Ironically, in 1960, he endorsed Richard Nixon for President over Kennedy because he felt Nixon's farm policies were better for the nation.

I'd encourage you to read a recent book about Wallace. It's called "American Dreamer". You should be able to find it in most libraries.

I can think of one more book that may interest you. I found at the Minneapolis Public Library a few years ago.

Read "Quixotic Crusade".

It's writen about Wallace and the Progressive Party' 1948 campaign. Quite fascinating but it has been out of print for a while. If you can find it somewhere, it is well worth the read.

A friend at Iowa Public Television in Des Moines has produced a documentary on Wallace that will run nationally on their network.
I think Wallace exhibited the mindset of many wealthy liberals--he didn't understand why the rest of us didn't want to give our money away, too. I am truly thankful that FDR picked Harry Truman as his veep...

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