Is the DNC Repeating History in Derailing a Socialist Candidate?
March 20, 2020 When FDR died in 1945, Truman took over as president. Had it
been Henry Wallace, history may have taken a much different course, writes
Marjorie Cohn.
From left to right: James F. Byrnes, President Harry S. Truman and Henry A.
Wallace, during funeral for President Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 14, 1945.
(Abbie Rowe, U.S. National Archives, Wikimedia Commons)
By Marjorie Cohn
Truthout
In 1944, the Democratic National Committee (DNC) ensured that socialist
Henry Wallace would not succeed Franklin D. Roosevelt (FDR) as president. Is
history repeating itself in 2020?
Senator Bernie Sanders, a Democratic socialist, received the most votes in
the first three primary elections. After former Vice President Joe Biden, a
centrist, scored his first primary win, the DNC consolidated the Democratic
Party Establishment around him. Candidates Pete Buttigieg, a former mayor,
and Senator Amy Klobuchar immediately dropped out of the race and endorsed
Biden. Former U.S. Representative Beto O'Rourke, a former candidate, did the
same. Senators Kamala Harris and Cory Booker, who had already quit the
primary race, followed suit and New York City's former Mayor Michael
Bloomberg did as well. The party bosses likely wanted to ensure that Sanders
would not upend the corporate order.
Wallace, who held many of the same political positions as Sanders, was one
of the architects of the New Deal. He served as FDR's agriculture secretary,
vice president and commerce secretary. But the ailing FDR's 1944 bid to
select Wallace as his vice president for what would be his final
presidential term was derailed by the corporate party bosses who made sure
that Harry Truman would follow FDR as president instead of Wallace.
When FDR died in 1945, Truman became president. Had it been Wallace, "there
might have been no atomic bombings, no nuclear arms race, and no Cold War,"
Oliver Stone and Peter Kuznick wrote in "The Untold History of the United
States."
Parallels Between Wallace & Sanders
There are several parallels between Sanders and Wallace - both in their
ideologies and in the opposition they engendered from the leadership of the
Democratic Party. In a June 2019 speech, Sanders invoked FDR's 1944 economic
bill of rights, which proposed many policies similar to Sanders'. When he
defines himself as a democratic socialist, Sanders said, he means "Economic
rights are human rights." The core of his Medicare for All plan is, "Health
care is a human right."
At the March 15 debate with Biden, Sanders asked the rhetorical question:
Where is the power in America?
He then answered, "Who owns the media? Who owns the economy? Who owns the
legislative process? Why do we give tax breaks to billionaires and not raise
the minimum wage? Why do we pump up the oil industry while a half a million
people are homeless in America?"
The debate was framed by the coronavirus pandemic, which, Sanders noted,
"exposes the weakness and dysfunctionality of the health care system."
Although we spend twice as much as any other country on health care, Sanders
pointed out, we aren't ready with test kits and ventilators.
"While we work to pass a 'Medicare for All,' single-payer system," Sanders
said during a speech from his home in Vermont three days before the debate,
"the United States government today must make it clear that in the midst of
this emergency, everyone in our country, regardless of income or where they
live, must be able to get all of the health care they need without costs."
Senators Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders during Democratic primary debate,
February 2020. (Screenshot)
During the debate, Sanders criticized the bipartisan $8.3 billion
coronavirus spending bill. It mandates temporary paid sick leave and paid
family and medical leave. But, according to The New York Times, various
exemptions could potentially exclude millions of workers. Moreover, the
exemptions disproportionately hurt low-wage workers. And it contains no
limits on the ability of the pharmaceutical companies to profit from the
coronavirus. "It's clear the fingerprints of the business lobby are all over
the exclusions in the bill," said Vicki Shabo, senior fellow at the think
tank New America.
Wallace, like Sanders, was a champion of the "common man." And that also
incurred the wrath of the party conservatives.
'Century of Common Man'
American farmers were reeling economically from the Great Depression when
FDR appointed Wallace as secretary of agriculture in 1933. During the eight
years he held that office, Wallace instituted many policies that vastly
improved conditions for the nation's farmers.
"Wallace was a great secretary of agriculture," Arthur Schlesinger wrote,
adding,
"In time he widened his concern beyond commercial farming to subsistence
farming and rural poverty. For the urban poor, he provided food stamps and
school lunches. He instituted programs for land-use planning, soil
conservation and erosion control. And always he promoted research to combat
plant and animal diseases, to locate drought-resistant crops and to develop
hybrid seeds in order to increase productivity."
In addition to "his reputation as one of the New Deal visionaries on
domestic policy," Wallace "carved credentials as an outspoken antifascist,"
Stone and Kuznick wrote.
When FDR ran for a third term in 1940, he chose Wallace as his running mate.
As vice president, Wallace was a strong anti-imperialist - criticizing the
British, German, French and American empires alike. "No nations will have
the God-given right to exploit other nations . . . there must be neither
military nor economic imperialism," Wallace stated in a 1942 address.
In that speech, widely regarded as one of his most important, Wallace said,
"Some have spoken of the 'American Century.' I say . . . the century . . .
which will come of this war - can and must be the century of the common
man."
Wallace was disliked by the Democratic Party leaders, who were not happy
when he called for a global "people's revolution" and suggested that the
United States should work with the Soviet Union. The party conservatives
also opposed Wallace's advocacy for workers, women, Black people and the
colonized in European countries. "His enemies included Wall Street bankers
and other anti-union business interests, southern segregationists, and
defenders of British and French colonialism," Stone and Kuznick explained.
When FDR ran for his fourth and final term as president, he again sought to
put Wallace on the ticket. Wallace was the most popular Democratic
candidate, according to a Gallup poll. But in his weakened condition, FDR
lacked the energy to fight the party bosses as they manipulated the process
to make Truman his vice president. Truman was undistinguished but could be
counted on to go along with the corporate program.
After FDR died, Truman succeeded him. In 1946, Wallace urged Truman to tamp
down the "armament race" and warned of the dangers of the "atomic bombs."
Wallace would not have used nuclear weapons against Japan. Nor would he have
stoked the Cold War as did his successors. Wallace opposed "preventive war,"
which violated the then recently adopted United Nations Charter.
Wallace delivered a strong speech at Madison Square Garden in New York City,
exhorting the U.S. not to drop atomic bombs on the Soviet Union. He sought
to limit the budget for weapons of war. "No nation should be allowed to
spend on its military establishment more than perhaps 15 percent of its
budget," Wallace said, endeavoring to halt the impending Cold War with
Russia.
Sanders, too, decries the bloated military budget. "Instead of spending $1.8
trillion on weapons of destruction designed to kill each other," he declared
at the March 15 debate, "maybe we should pool our resources and fight our
common enemy, which is climate change."
In 1948, Wallace ran a third-party campaign against Truman. Although Wallace
had advocated for civil rights, opposed the poll tax and would not speak in
segregated venues, Black people "tended to be wary of his politics, and
voted overwhelmingly for Truman," Alex Ross wrote in The New Yorker.
During the campaign, Wallace was red-baited and accused of being a Soviet
operative. Stone and Kuznick analyzed the results of the election: "The
Red-baiting, the dismissive treatment of Wallace by the major newspapers,
Truman's move to the left on domestic issues, and a last-minute rush to
Truman by Democratic voters who feared a victory by Republican Thomas Dewey
resulted in an electoral disaster for the Wallace campaign."
Sound familiar?
Supporters at a phone bank at former Vice President Joe Biden's presidential
campaign office in Des Moines, Iowa, Jan. 13, 2010. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr)
Narrative That Sanders Can't Beat Trump
Aided and abetted by the corporate media, the centrists in the Democratic
Party are doing their best to ensure that Sanders is not the Democratic
candidate. Nearly all former candidates - except Senator Elizabeth Warren,
who remains aloof from endorsing either Sanders or Biden - are centrists and
support Biden.
The narrative promulgated by centrists and the corporate media and
internalized by many Black voters is that Sanders can't win the presidential
election, even though polls have consistently concluded that both he and
Biden have an even chance of beating President Donald Trump.
Like Wallace, Sanders has been red-baited and accused of supporting
authoritarian governments. In a front-page story, The New York Times painted
a sinister - but false - picture of Sanders supporting the Soviet Union when
he traveled there in 1988 to establish a sister city program between
Burlington, Vermont, and a Russian city.
At their debate, Biden confronted Sanders about his praise for Fidel
Castro's literacy campaign after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Sanders replied
that he opposed authoritarian governments but "it is incorrect to say they
never do anything positive." He cited China's reduction in poverty. Former
President Barack Obama - whom Biden frequently references - went even
further than Sanders in praising Cuban achievements when he tried to begin
the process of normalizing relations between the U.S. and Cuba.
Biden said it's one thing to occasionally mention something positive a
country has done, but, he added, "the idea of praising a country that is
violating human rights around the world." It is unlikely Biden was referring
to the United States, whose officials are being investigated by the
International Criminal Court for committing war crimes and crimes against
humanity during the "war on terror." Biden, who was instrumental in securing
congressional approval for President George W. Bush's Iraq War, will be a
good steward of the empire.
Sanders Winning Ideological Battle
Although Wallace got few votes and failed to unseat Truman in 1948, he
"succeeded in having his ideas adopted, except in the field of foreign
affairs," Stone and Kuznick noted.
Likewise, when he debated Biden, Sanders said, "Joe has won more states than
I have, but we're winning the ideological battle." Indeed, exit polls on
Super Tuesday showed that a majority of voters in Michigan, Missouri and
Mississippi - all of which were won by Biden - favored a government medical
plan instead of private insurance.
"We are winning the generational struggle" as well, Sanders added. Depending
on the states, he added, "we're winning the 50 years and younger" and "big
time with 30 years and younger."
Throughout the primary season, Sanders's fingerprints have been all over the
debates and have permeated the campaigns. Indeed, all of the candidates have
embraced some or many of Sanders's progressive policies. Just before the
debate, Biden adopted a version of Sanders's proposal that students be able
to attend public colleges and universities tuition-free.
