DEMOCRATS AND PROGRESSIVES: The 1948 Presidential Election as a Test of Postwar Liberalism

Henry Wallace firmly believed that his 1948 Progressive Party campaign pushed Truman to the left, toward the politics of civil rights and full employment; Truman disagreed, and so does this author. Yet the major documents cited here tend to affirm Wallace's view. Truman advisor Clark Clifford wrote a memo in November 1947 detailing Truman's options for undercutting Wallace; Clifford proposed that the President become ""more liberal,"" win over labor (which he did with a Taft-Hartley veto), capture the black vote, and call for tax cuts and a housing program, while mobilizing anti-Communist liberals. The strategy paper of the newly formed Americans for Democratic Action advocated both a cold war red-baiting campaign and a program of liberal pledges to counter Wallace. Yarnell maintains that the Progressives actually helped Truman take hard-line stands on foreign policy, but provides little evidence. Though Yarnell's partisan vigor gets as much mileage as possible out of these antique controversies, the book will chiefly attract specialists.