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1948 Shows This Election is Far From Over [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-07-20  

In 1948, the media has just discovered polling and was convinced President Harry Truman--who was regarded as an accidental President who wasn't up to the job--was going to lose. Big Democratic donors were panicking and claiming Truman wasn't up to the job. Conservative Democrats from the South, incensed at the desegregation of the military walked away from the Truman candidacy. Senator Strom Thurmond ran under the Dixiecrat Party banner. The left wing, pissed off at Truman's anti-communism and stance on Palestine (Truman's administration recognized the Nation of Israel immediately upon its establishment) found a third party candidate in former Vice President to FDR Henry Wallace.

The New Deal Coalition was in shambles. Recriminations dominated the summer and fall of 1948 in the Democratic Party. Thomas Dewey, the Republican nominee and Governor of New York, was treated by the New York Times and other media outlets as the President in waiting.

Truman decided to hell with it, and got on a train and started giving speeches off the back of it. Everywhere he campaigned, the crowds became bigger. But the polls didn't change much. There was so much confidence that Truman would lose amongst the media that they rushed to be first in printing a headline of Dewey defeats Truman.

Then a funny thing happened. People actually voted. And President Harry Truman won by 3 million votes.

Sound familiar? History often repeats itself...

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