Kerry vs. Kucinich 2004 / Truman vs. Wallace 1948 parallel

[DerekG]

The 1948 election was a watershed year for American liberalism, and it's quite amazing that a significant number of progressives rarely mention it.

Simply put: 1948 was the year when the Democratic Party made its unholy union with cold warriorism. The final phase in purging socialists and radicals from Congress was underway; the president of the United States, one Harry Truman, had used propaganda in order to sell the notion of an encroaching "Communist menace" to the American people for nearly three years, in his quest to make the post-war world safe for U.S. interests. Democratic movements in Italy and Greece had already fallen due to our government, while Truman denied a desperate Ho Chi Minh support in creating an independent Vietnam. Now that the Administration had sold the Cold War to the citizenry, the Republican Party would naturally seek to beat the Democrats at their own game.

In the midst of this madness stood Progressive Party candidate Henry A. Wallace. The former vice-president of Franklin Roosevelt pleaded for the New Deal to be salvaged and extended to the impoverished, and also addressed the need for the Democratic Party to focus its attention on civil rights (Truman would attempt to take the wind out Wallace's sails with the de-segregation of the Armed Forces). Most importantly, Wallace foresaw a disasterous foreign policy arising--and did whatever he could to stop it.

Wallace was nothing less than the prophet of 20th century America.

We certainly know the story: Truman forged the National Security State that would alter the destinies of over 30 countries in the next 55 years; he established a permanent war economy, directing our money away from schools, hospitals, and homes and into the manufacturing of nuclear weapons; he sent 58,000 American boys to their deaths in the Korean intervention (does de-segregation mean anything?); he sowed the seeds for a Cold War that would claim the lives of millions worldwide.

Post-1948, it would not matter whether a Democratic president was liberal or moderate--he would still be an advocate for using imperialistic actions in "defending" the American Empire. Lyndon Johnson, one should recall, was our most liberal executive, yet he would conduct a genocidal war against the Vietnamese. Bill Clinton, a moderate, would preside over atrocities in Iraq and Columbia.

Truman was the establishment candidate, as is Kerry. Just as the former let the New Deal dwindle on the vine, the latter has failed to offer nothing but moderate solutions to our country's crippling problems involving health care, education, and poverty. Like Truman, Kerry doesn't seem to have any qualms about our escalating military budget.

We have our Wallace--Dennis Kucinich, who dreams of a "world without end, not a war without end."

And your Truman will change nothing.

[WI_DEM]

1. I certainly like DK and support him over JK for nomination, but

unlike Henry Wallace, DK will not run on a third party against Kerry. He wants to influence the platform which is great--and I think he should stay in the race. But he won't run as a third party candidate but will eventually support Kerry.

[Bucky]

3. so true

Kucinich is all class. The original post ignores the fact that Harry Truman was a great president, truly visionary. To attack "cold warriorism" as if Joe Stalin wasn't a real threat to US security seems a bit ill informed about history.

[IrateCitizen]

5. To ignore the way the communist menace was hyped....

... seems a bit ill-informed about history.

The Truman Presidency was the watershed of the split between "liberals" and "leftists" that we are still trying to bridge today. Truman encouraged not only embrace of cold warriorism abroad (and the permanent war economy that came with it), but also turned his sights INWARD for suspected "comrades" within the United States itself.

Ever hear of Joe McCarthy? He never would have had the platform he did without the contribution of Truman to the national anti-communist hysteria.

Ever hear of the Vietnam War? It never would have come to pass had Truman, like his predecessor FDR, deigned to help Ho Chi Minh establish an independent, democratic state in Korea. Instead, Truman urged DeGaulle to re-assert French colonial control over the region. We all know how THAT worked out.

While Truman didn't exactly roll back the New Deal -- his domestic economic policies were very liberal -- it could be argued that his contribution toward the permanent war economy actually helped UNDERMINE the better aspects of economic Keynesian liberalism that rose out of the New Deal and post-WWII programs, creating the "general malaise" of the post-Vietnam era. He tried to give BOTH guns AND butter -- something that can not be sustained over the long term. And with the ascendancy of the Reaganites in the 1980's, we have seen the abandonment of "butter" for focus on "guns" -- with disastrous long-term consequences, some of which have not yet fully taken hold but most certainly will as the middle class is eroded and lower class is solidly stratified.

[no name no slogan]

22. Very good points: even Humphrey was a red-baiter in 1948

Even when Humphrey was mayor of Mpls in 1948 (and spoke in favor of desegregation at the 1948 Dem convention), he was still a fervent anti-communist, and helped Joe McCarthy in his witch hunts in the late 40s/early 50s.

The "communist threat" of the USSR at the end of WWII was practically non-existent. The Soviet Union lost millions of people to the Nazis (and Stalin's purges) and was a basket case economically. It's "expansion" in Eastern Europe was mostly for security purposes.

Keep in mind that Russia had been invaded several times by western European countries over the last 150 years (Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, and then Hitler) and wanted to put as much non-Soviet land between it and western Europe. Hence it extended Stalinism into eastern Europe, in order that it would not suffer yet another invasion by another rich, warlike western nation.

Truman, although he did many good things, ignited the cold war, and kept the US economy on its wartime footing-- a condition which still prevails to this day. Instead of using our powers for creating good, we used it to create more weapons, many more than were ever needed for any war.

We squandered half a century's scientific advances to create more ways to kill each other. Instead of finding a power source that would not harm the planet, we continued to create nuclear energy, whose byproducts can cause death millions of years after their creation.

Although we made numerous scientific advances in the last half of the 20th century, we could have made many more if we were not preparing for a war which could not have been won by ANYONE.

[corporatewhore]

12. Truman did what stalin,reagan nixon and geogie boy have failed to do

Drop a nuclear bomb on civilians

[DerekG]

21. I am well aware of Stalin's crimes...

By no means am I an apologist for that despot (and I know you weren't inferring that), but the threat he posed to the world was exaggerated by the administration in the immediate post-war world. This was all devised in order to protect interests in Europe and Asia.

It's nice to hear from another Kucinich supporter.

26. Truman was a good president, but

he did drop the atomic bomb. TWICE

[debsianben]

28. He wasn't, and

that's ridiculous.

Stalin was a despicable SOB, no argument, but the notion that the U.S. in the Truman era was under threat of attack by Stalin's USSR is historically laughable.

Russia had just been utterly devestated by WWII. At 20 million dead, they had the largest number of war losses in the entire world. During most of the time that Truman was President, Stalin was just interested in re-building the Soviet economy from the ashes, consolidating control over his Eastern European "buffer zone" against possible future invasion and worrying about the fact that the U.S. had just dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in what Stalin surely realized as most contemporary historians admit was less a decision about ending the war (the Japanese were already ready to surrender) and more about putting the USSR on notice.

[private_ryan]

2. Kerry vs. Kucinich 2004?

How so? DK never got more than 2-3%.

[goodhue]

4. 30% in HA, 17% in MN, 16% in ME

TX & FL upcoming

[private_ryan]

6. my bad

I stopped counting when it became clear that Kerry was the winner. You really, deep inside you never expected DK to win, did you? Be honest.

[charlie]

8. Did Wallace beat Truman?

You've missed the point of the thread.

[Protagoras]

13. I really like DK but lets keep our perspective

Ohio 9%. That's DKs home state right?

I want DKs voice in the convention but..2 states where you show best and still don't get 20% and your best showing being Hawaii where you come in 2nd with less than 900 votes doesn't really stand out as a strong showing.

[IrateCitizen]

15. You're right about perspective. This thread was about ideas...

... not poll numbers. And in that respect, there is a significant historical parallel.

[goodhue]

16. my perspective

Since May of 2003 I have been one of hundreds of Minnesota for Kucinich volunteers. On Tuesday we got 17% in state. A week from Saturday I will be one of many Kucinich delegates at my SD convention. Then hopefully onto state convention in Duluth where a lucky bunch will then get to go to Boston as Kucinich delegates.

What is your perspective?

[scarletwoman]

7. Wonderful post!

At a crucial moment in history, our country turned down a very dark road indeed, the national security state. Our destiny, and the destiny of every other country in the world, has been distorted and deformed by its development. It is heartbreaking...

sw

[PATRICK]

9. Loss of nerve or direction

or whatever. It seems still to be the Democratic onus as the Repugs dare anything, putting people physically, mentally morally unfit and unscrupulous forward with an outrageous inflexible agenda against the common good. Even when beaten they just come back because that is all they have. The real big tent Democratic Party is the nervous one, the splitting one, the compromising and navel-gazing one especially at the wrong time.

[RichM]

10. Fine post - a valid historical analogy of progressive vs Establishment

As one can already see in the first few responses, most Democrats don't know enough of the history to appreciate how accurately you've characterized Truman. The late 1940's were indeed watershed years.

The only sentence I'd quibble with is your first one, when you say in the 2nd clause "it's quite amazing that a significant number of progressives rarely mention it." It's NOT really so amazing, & the reason for this appears in your next sentence: "1948 was the year when the Democratic Party made its unholy union with cold warriorism." This unholy union knocked the foundations out from under American liberalism. After this, "liberalism" could never be more than a corrupted bastardized ideology, an unappetizing mix of cosmetic idealism, plus major doses of militarism & empire-building, & all the dishonest propaganda that must accompany such projects. After this period, "liberalism" always contained a heavy component of rightwing premises, at its core.

[IrateCitizen]

14. The first real exposure I got to this side of Truman...

... was when I read Zinn's A People's History of the United States. The red-baiting that went on in his supposedly "liberal" administration was absolutely shameless, and only contributed to nationwide paranoia. And when you analyze the way in which he embraced the permanent war economy, it clears up a lot of questions about why we are where we are today.

[RichM]

18. Yes... Another great discussion of it is Doug Dowd's "Blues for America,"

which is an analytical memoir of much of the 20th century.

Dowd is a very interesting guy. He's a close personal friend of Zinn's, a former economics professor at Cornell, about age 84 now. He ran as Eldridge Cleaver's vice-presidential candidate in 1968 on the Peace & Freedom Party ticket, & was on the steering committe for one of the great antiwar demonstrations ("The Mobe") of the late 60's. He teaches a monthly seminar here, which I attend. He's one of these 80+ yr olds whose mental faculties are still clear as a bell.

When Dowd discusses the Truman years, he makes it clear that this was an absolutely pivotal period. Our country was set on a path, then, which guaranteed a permanent war economy, & all the apparatus of the national security state. He says, in so many words, that his gut feeling at the time was that the country would never recover from this.

[corporatewhore]

19. and thats not his worst offense think -The Bomb

[IrateCitizen]

20. I don't blame that one solely on Truman

There was plenty of blame to go around for that decision, even if the buck ultimately did stop at Truman's desk.

Hell, even Albert Einstein partially blamed himself for that one, saying that if he knew how far off the Germans' heavy water experiments really were at the time, he never would have recommended the Manhattan Project to FDR.

[scarletwoman]

17. Excellent!

"After this, "liberalism" could never be more than a corrupted bastardized ideology, an unappetizing mix of cosmetic idealism, plus major doses of militarism & empire-building, & all the dishonest propaganda that must accompany such projects. After this period, "liberalism" always contained a heavy component of rightwing premises, at its core."

Too few "liberals" seem to be capable of critically examining the unspoken core assumptions of our American consensus reality. Perhaps this inability to pose questions and solutions "outside the frame" is why "liberalism" is so impotent.

sw

[Mairead]

11. And let's not forget that it was HT who presided over the "redskinning" of

the Palestinian Arabs, and is thus arguably responsible for all the deaths and destruction that have followed from that, right up to the latest death/maiming in Iraq.

[DerekG]

24. Good God...

I forgot about Truman's role in that affair. No wonder I bristle whenever a presidential candidate cites HST as an inspiration.

[mobuto]

29. Oh?

Truman supported the United Nations, which established a Palestinian State.

But no Palestinian State was ever established.

Why?

Because Transjordan (now Jordan) conquered it.

Attack the Jordanians.

Don't attack Truman.

[lams712]

23. Good post....but I think Kerry is better than BUSH so I will

support him even though he's not perfect.

[RichM]

25. This thread deserves more discussion!

:kick:

[mobuto]

27. That's a really bad parallel

1. Kucinich is campaigning within the confines of the Democratic Party. He isn't running a quixotic third-party campaign as Wallace did.

2. As Wallace picked up support, Truman was FORCED to emphasize the Cold War in order to carve out a new constituency. It was because the hard left went for Wallace so decisively that Truman stopped pandering to them and the Democratic Party went hard to the right. That's Wallace's legacy and its a terrible one.