1948 was an interesting presidential election. The incumbent president was Harry Truman, who had yet to win election in his own right. In 1944, with President Franklin Roosevelt clearly slowing down, conservative Democrats forced the ultra-liberal Vice President Henry Wallace off the ticket in favor of Truman, a moderate senator from Missouri. Truman succeeded to the presidency mere months after FDR’s fourth inauguration when the president died of a stroke in April 1945.
The coalition of Democrats that had dominated government since the start of the New Deal collapsed in 1946 as Republicans regained control of both houses of Congress. In 1947, Republicans passed the Taft-Hartley Act, curtailing the power of labor unions, over Truman’s veto.
Truman entered the 1948 campaign as the obvious underdog. Various Democratic politicians smelled weakness and attempted to dump Truman at the Democratic National Convention, but the president survived, selecting the elderly senator from Kentucky Albin Barkley as his vice president.
Pollsters and oddsmakers heavily favored the Republican ticket that year. New York governor Thomas Dewey, who lost to FDR in 1944, emerged as the nominee once more after a fierce primary campaign. His chief opponent was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, the author of the Taft-Hartley Act and the leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party. Dewey achieved a majority on the third ballot, choosing California governor (and future Chief Justice of the United States) Earl Warren as his vice president.
Most Americans believed that Dewey was destined to be the next President of the United States. On paper, a ticket featuring the governors of two of our largest states, one on each coast, versus a deeply unpopular incumbent, was no contest.
Believing he had the election in the bag, Dewey campaigned cautiously, avoiding directly criticizing the Truman Administration and attempting to appear above the fray. Truman, on the other hand, relentlessly attacked both Dewey and the Republican Congress.
In football, there is a formation known as “prevent defense”. When a team is winning by more than a touchdown, its coach might drop his linebackers and defensive backs to prevent long plays while giving up short runs and passes. The idea is to run out the clock while preventing long passes for quick scores, but this strategy can easily backfire if a disciplined offense can complete short passes while managing the clock. I’ve heard numerous commentators call this strategy “playing not to lose” as opposed to playing to win.
Dewey played not to lose, while Truman played to win. You know the rest of the story. Truman was reelected with 303 electoral votes to Dewey’s 189. The president also won the popular vote by more than 2 million votes. Not only that, but the Democrats regained control of both houses of Congress.
Right now, less than three weeks until Election Day, Donald Trump is winning. The same polls that showed him losing in a landslide to Hillary Clinton in 2016 (he barely won) and Joe Biden in 2020 (he barely lost) show a much closer race, with Trump leading in the swing states. Trump continues to gain momentum with every rally and interview, while every appearance by Kamala Harris shows how unprepared and unqualified she is.
After bombing what should have been a fairly easy interview with Bret Baier on Fox News, Harris skipped the Al Smith Dinner — the first candidate to do so since Walter Mondale in 1984. As Trump quipped, it didn’t work out well for him.
By all measures, Donald Trump will win the 2024 election. He’s on track to win by margins that are too big to rig in too many states. The Democrats do not have an all-powerful voter fraud mechanism — their “fortification” of the 2024 election relied on ballot harvesting operations, changing laws using Covid as an excuse, and having teams of lawyers ready to quash Republican attempts to enforce the laws. This year, Republicans have an even stronger ground game, many laws have been fixed in the last four years, and Republican lawyers are ready to go. This is not to say they won’t be any shenanigans, but it’s not going to be as easy for the Democrats as it was in 2020.
To return to the football analogy, Republicans are up by a touchdown near the end of the fourth quarter. All they need to do is make one more stop and they win the game. That’s why it’s important not to play prevent defense. We must keep our foot on the gas and finish strong.
When it comes to the presidential election, we are fine here in Idaho. The last Democrat to win the Gem State was Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and that streak is not going to change this year. Nevertheless, it’s still imperative to vote, and to remind your family, friends, and neighbors to vote as well. Two of Ada County’s three commissioners are on the ballot — the last time Democrats controlled that board they canceled the Western Idaho Fair and ordered citizens to wear masks everywhere. We must also defeat Prop 1, the initiative to impose a jungle primary and ranked choice voting on our state. We cannot take anything for granted!
You can still move the needle in swing states. TP USA is doing the work of chasing ballots in Arizona, Cliff Maloney of Citizens Alliance is pounding the pavement in Pennsylvania to turn that state red as well. Both organizations can put your money to good use, as well as your time if you have some to spare!
The Senate is very much in play, and there is a good chance the Republicans will win control, which will be imperative for a successful second Trump Administration. If you have any money left to spare, send it to Tim Sheehy in Montana, Bernie Moreno in Ohio, Mike Rogers in Michigan, or Kari Lake in Arizona.
America might not survive another four years of Kamala Harris and the Democrats, but Donald Trump and his next administration will give us cover to secure our freedoms here in Idaho. We cannot play not to lose; we must play to win. The stakes have never been higher.
Gem State Chronicle is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
