1. Health issues. By 1944, FDR's health had deteriorated badly. Everybody who saw him for the first time in awhile remarked about how bad he looked. Yet, FDR was determined to run for a fourth term, on the dubious proposition that he couldn't desert his country in a tinme of war.
After meeting with FDR for the first time in three years, Joseph P. Kennedy, Sr. said, "If I hadn't been warned by the stories of his illness, I would have been shocked beyond words. He stayed behind his desk, and his face was as gray as his hair...I was convinced he was far from a well man. He is thin; he has an unhealthy color. His hands shake violently when he tries to take a drink of water. His words were slurred, and he had memory slips about names and numbers."
Similarly, Joe Biden decided to run in 2024, even though he was clearly too old for the job. Biden's deterioration wasn't as obvious as FDR's was, as it was mental decline rather than physical decline. But it was the same obstinancy that FDR exhibited in his 1944 run.
The damage to the country was much worse in Biden's case, as his last-minute withdrawal from the race did not give his VP, Kamala Harris, enough time to build up momentum for her campaign, and we got stuck with the atrocious Donald Trump, who is doing his best to destroy the country. We got lucky with FDR, as his VP, Harry Truman, turned out to be one of our better presidents, following FDR's death less than three months into his fourth term.
2. Voter suppression. A big issue in 1944 was how the GIs in uniform were going to be able to vote. There were 11.3 million GLs, an estimated nine million of them of voting age. Republicans were doing their best to limit the ability of these service members to vote, on the (accurate) theory that most would vote for their Commander in Chief. Attempts to impose a uniform federal absentee ballot were killed by the coalition of Republicans and Southern Democrats. So it was left up to each state to provide the mechanism for voting in that state's election, and at that time some states still had poll taxes, literary tests, and other means for denying blacks the ability to cast a ballot. In the end all 48 states provided for some sort of armed forces voting, and an estimated half of the service members eligible to vote actually did cast a ballot.
In recent years, up to and including 2024, the GOP has done its best to restrict votimg rights, just as it did in 1944. Battles over state voting procedures flooded the courts after the 2020 election, and likely would have occurred in 2024 had Trump again lost.
3. Soft on Communism. This became the main theme of Dewey's campaign as the election neared. In Boston he told the crowd that "In America a Communist is a man who supoprts a fourth term so that our form of government may more easily be changed", and he said that FDR had "only softly disavowed Communism". Many of these rants from Dewey and hs suporters were tinged with anti-Semitism.
Since 1944 the GOP "softness" allegations have morphed from "soft on Communism" to "soft on crime", or soft on terrorism". We hear many allegations today that the Democrats are not tough enough on crime, usually by way of arguing for longer sentences, no cash bail, etc. In the George W. Bush era we heard that the CIA must use torture to fight terrorism. In 2024 the affable and bumbling Biden was an easy target for all sorts of "softness" allegations.
4. Relatability. Thomas Dewey was a cold, aloof man, who did not like interacting with other people. FDR was just the opposite; he loved people. and was loaded with charm and charisma. The pithy quote from Oliver Wendell Holomes comes to mind; after meeting FDR, he famously described him as "third-rate intellect, first-rate temperament".
Dewey's aloofness might have caused his 1944 defeat to FDR, and it definitely did cause his 1948 loss to Harry Truman. Truman, a natural people person, made 356 whistle stops covering over 30,000 miles during the 1948 campaign, to only 50 for the lethargic Dewey, whose speches were so scripted and cautious that they energized nobody. On a scale of one to ten for relatability, Dewey was a zero.
There are very few elections since 1948 in which the less relatable candidate won. I can think of only three--1968, 1972, and 1976. It seems that after the back-to-back disasters of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, the electorate finally said "enough".
The burning question today is why the electorate continues to view Donald Trump as more relatable than the leading Democrats. My answer, simply put, is this: he speaks their language. The test I like to use is to imagine two steelworkers stopping off for a beer or two on their way home after a hard day's work. What sort of language would they use? They certainly would not say "unhoused" instead of "homeless", "food insecure" rather than "hungry", "undocumented person": rather than "illegal alien", or "existential threat" rather than just "threat". And they sure as hell wouldn't want their daughters to be run over on the sports field by biological males; and yet, when a Democratic Congressman expressed this sentiment, he was castigated by his fellow Democrats, with some even calling for him to resign from Congress! This illustrates how out of touch today's Democratic party has become.
The Trump campaign slogan which most resonated with the American people in 2024 simply said "She's for them, he's for us". This is why Trump won the working class vote 56%-42% (and 66%-32% for the white working class vote). Democratic policies are hugely more beneficial to the working class than the GOP's are, but it is the GOP which speaks their language, while the Democrats remain tone-deaf, using highfalutin language which does not resonate with voters.
No comments:
Post a Comment