Hey I just came across this graphic. It doesn't include sources, and it doesn't include 2020 so it must have been compiled during Trump's term of office.
I get the perspective that Wallace supported a peaceful relationship with the USSR, and that Ike ended the Korean conflict, so why not endorse him? Also Nixon in 1960 seems not to have been as dark a person as he was in 1968.
It just seems too far to say that Wallace joined the Republicans in the 1950s. The whole spy network of the 1950s that JF Dulles and Allen Dulles promoted wouldn't have been nearly as intense under a Stevenson administration, and Stevenson as far as I know didn't paint Wallace's campaign as communist.
Overall, I think that Sautter did a good job in his analysis of the 1948 campaign. He showed how some Truman statements helped him to win in 1948 while contributing the growth of McCarthyism. He also pointed out that Dewey really put his heart into the 1944 campaign, and after losing then, he didn't try as hard in 1948. He also said that Truman was more critical of Wallace than Dewey was.
Sautter's coverage of some earlier campaigns wasn't as insightful, but to be fair he was primarily discussing conventions and not the general election campaigns in the book. Also I wish that he would have at least listed all national political conventions held in Philadelphia, even if he didn't cover all of them.
Hey I came across something today that surprised me. Craig Sautter says in his book Philadelphia Presidential Conventions, top of page 330, that Wallace became a Republican during the Eisenhower administration. Apparently Wallace was so upset about Truman calling his 1948 campaign Communist that he couldn't go back to the Democrats.
To be fair, I noticed a few errors that crept into the book elsewhere, and maybe this is another example of that.
Buck said this in an interview after announcing he isn't running again this year: "We're at a time in American politics, that I am not going to lie on behalf of my presidential candidate, on behalf of my party. And I'm very sad that others in my party have taken the position that, as long as we get the White House, it doesn't really matter what we say." You can find more of his statement here:
An alleged spy? ... because Guilford County NC had so many tidbits the Soviets would be interested in. I grew up on the other side of Greensboro from her.
Not that anyone asked, but here is my ranking of the Democrats:
1 - Adlai Stevenson
2 - Stephen Douglas
3 - Hillary Clinton
4 - Alfred E. Smith
5 - John F. Kerry
6 - William J. Bryan
7 - Hubert Humphrey
8 - Winfield S. Hancock
9 - Michael Dukakis
10 - Walter Mondale
11 - Alton Parker
12 - Al Gore
13 - George McGovern
14 - John W. Davis
15 - Samuel Tilden
16 - George McClellan
17 - James M. Cox
18 - Horace Greeley
19 - Horatio Seymour
1 - Charles E. Hughes
2 - Wendell Willkie
3 - Thomas E. Dewey
4 - Mitt Romney
5 - Bob Dole
6 - John McCain
7 - James G. Blaine
8 - Barry Goldwater
9 - Alfred M. Landon
10 - John C. Fremont
I purchased the audio version of the book. Her dedication to the Constitution is laudable.
Those of you who worry about Mike Johnson would be interested in his various appearances in her book. She depicts him on several occasions saying things he knew not to be true. Apparently he described him during these weeks as a "constitutional attorney" - which she ridiculed because she spoke with several people like that for their perspective, and none of them agreed with him.
I have gotten in the book to about noon on 1/6/2021. I think that a discussion of what normally happens would have been helpful to emphasize how different Trump's actions were.
Bernie recently told Seth Meyers that his wife Jane took his famous mittens from the Biden inauguration and hid them for posterity. I hope when the time comes she will donate them to a museum somewhere!
