The American Presidential Election of 1944

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The 40th episode in a very long series about the American presidential elections from 1788 to the present. In 1944, World War II is going much better for the Americans, and FDR has proven to be an effective war time President. Can he get elected a fourth time?

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The 40th Presidential election in American history took place on November 7, 1944. Almost three years earlier, the Empire of Japan attacked an American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. 2400 Americans were killed and 1200 wounded. The attack also damaged five battleships and three destroyers, and seven other ships and more than 200 aircraft were ruined. It completely took most Americans by surprise, and the next day President Franklin Roosevelt asked Congress to declare war on Japan, which they promptly did. Soon after the United States also found itself at war with Nazi Germany, joining the struggling Allies. This war became known as World War 2, and uh, it’s the biggest war of all time.

By election day, 1944, the war was going much better for the Allies, as the forces of both Japan and Germany had severely weakened. Roosevelt, or FDR, had become a popular war time President. Unlike in 1940, he did not hesitate to run for re-election during this very critical time. The Democratic Party mostly supported him, and his was renominated. However, most conservative Democrats were uneasy about renominating Vice President Henry Wallace, who they argued was too friendly with labor unions and those wanting to end racial segregation in the South. Some recommended Harry Truman, the Senator from Missouri who was more moderate. Truman had made a name for himself fighting fraud and waste in the war program, but FDR didn’t know him very well. FDR trusted and liked Wallace, but gave in to the pressure from the Democratic Party to have Truman be his running mate instead.

Even with Truman’s nomination, several conservative Democrats were not happy. For years, they had not liked the way both the New Deal and the war effort expanded the federal government and hurt business. After the Supreme Court decision Smith v. Allwright, which said a Texas law saying it was ok to discriminate against African Americans in Democratic Party primaries was unconstitutional, they became even more upset with FDR and the party establishment. This group became known as the Texas Regulars, and they ended up breaking away from the Democrats. They were purely a protest group, and they never even could agree on another candidate. The main goal was to prevent the reelection of FDR.

The Republicans again had many folks interested in their presidential nomination. Wendell Willkie was interested again. Thomas Dewey was interested again. Robert Taft was not. Instead, he told everyone John Bricker, the Governor of Ohio, would make a fine president. But some former Taft supporters gravitated toward General Douglas MacArthur, who was then leading Allied forces in the Pacific theater of the war. Another leading contender for the nomination was Harold Stassen, who ran for President pretty much every four years for the rest of the century. He had been the governor of Minnesota when he decided to give up the position to fight the war in the Pacific as a naval officer.

Well, this time the Republicans went with Dewey, who by this time was the Governor of New York had become more of a national figure anyway. They chose Bricker as his running mate. It was a fairly strong ticket, but interestingly enough, Wendell Willkie, the Republican nominee of 1940, had not endorsed them. In fact, Willkie was had been pretty friendly to FDR since the last election, and some even speculated that Willkie could have been FDR’s new running mate instead of Truman. No one would find out what he was truly thinking, however, because Willkie died on October 8.

On the campaign trail, Dewey talked trash about how FDR needed to lay off the economy and shrink the size of government, now that the end of the war was in sight. FDR argued he was just doing whatever was necessary to win the war, and most Americans generally agreed with him. There was one issue- some doubted FDR could make it another term, as his health appeared to be on the decline. Because of this, the Democrats had to sell his running mate, Harry Truman.

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