Presidential candidate Barack Obama, during a speech to auto workers at the GM plant in Janesville, Wisc., Feb. 13, put forward his support for what amounts to a large chunk of labor’s program to re-vitalize the country.
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3 comments:
Don't hold your breath. If Obama gets the nomination, a big if, he will lose in McGovernite fashion. I cast my first vote in 1948 for Henry Wallace. I was in Yankee Stadium the night he packed the place with 75,000 cheering supporters. A few weeks later, Harry Truman couldn't get 9,000 into Madison Square Garden. Rallies and platitudes and union support do not win elections. Wallace had the support of a couple of big unions. The members didn't vote for him.
Wallace and Obama are hardly comparable. One big difference: millions of people have already voted for him. Another, Wallace was a third party candidate. Third, Obama will have a campaign war chest that will be so much larger than McCain's. And McCain. Sheesh. He's not exactly the best of the GOP now is he?
anon,
Henry Wallace didn't have the vote of the big unions. The left unions which supported Wallace were expelled from the CIO in 1949 and 1950, in part because of there support of the third party campaign, which was taken as further evidence by the anti-Communist faction of their being under Communist party control and the Communist party, in the expulsions, was defined as an agent of the Soviet Union, which the country was then on a cold war footing against. During the campaign, the CIO central leadership, endorsing Truman, sent out forces to purge individuals from the CIO state and local councils who were supporting the Progressive party.
In 1972, the AFL-CIO refused to endorse McGovern and didn't formally endorse anyone, the first and only time since 1936 that the main forces in organized labor didn't support the Democratic candidate. Many Democratic machines also didn't support McGovern. Nixon also had a lot going for him in regard to a relatively good year economically, the appearance that the Vietnam War was over, etc.
If you are interested in Henry Wallace and the 1948 election, I would suggest that you read an old and good book on the subject, even though it was overly critical of the CPUSA, The Rise and Fall of the Peoples Century: Henry A.Wallace and American Liberalism by myself, Norman Markowitz.
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