I’m not quite sure what this guy has been smoking. Aside from Reuther kicking the Communists out of the unions and possibly some sense from Schlesinger, the Democrats have never been willing to admit how thoroughly FDR’s administration had been infiltrated. It wasn’t until the Venona papers emerged that Alger Hiss wasn’t regarded as a martyr who had been unfairly prosecuted by Nixon.
The reality of the political landscape was that the U.S. government had engaged in blatant pro-Stalin propaganda during the later war years in order to sell the “lend-lease” program to the American public.
McCarthy had to resort to a degree of sensationalism in order to overcome the results of this propaganda campaign and the image of “Uncle Joe” Stalin that resulted.
Even when Kruschev emerged in the late 1950’s to lead the Soviet Union the American MSM portrayed him as a grandfatherly figure ignoring that he had presided over much of Stalin’s purge activities and was internally known as the “butcher of the Ukraine” by the Soviet populace.
Haynes writes:
The heroes in this political marginalization of the extreme left were such figures as Reinhold Niebuhr, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., and Eleanor Roosevelt from Americans for Democratic Action; liberal Democratic politicians such as Hubert Humphrey and Paul Douglas; and labor leaders such as Walter Reuther and Philip Murray. Yet they were not McCarthy’s allies — indeed, these were the kind of people against whom McCarthy railed.
Did McCarthy rail against Reuther?. Haynes doesn't specifically say so.