1948 Dbq

The 1948 election is considered one of, if not, the greatest election in American history. What made this so essential was how President Harry S. Truman had the odds against him when facing Thomas E. Dewey, but eventually won in the end with some repercussions. One of them being the split in the Democratic party, due to social issues. However, his victory marked the fifth consecutive win for the Democratic party in a presidential election. As a result of the 1948 election, the democrats would regain control of both houses of Congress. Therefore, Truman’s election confirmed the status of the Democrats as the nation’s majority party, a status they would retain until 1952 [1]. During World War II, after Franklin D. Roosevelt died in his fourth

Truman also prompted the Marshall Plan, which provided significant amounts of U.S. aid to the corrupt economies of Western Europe and also vetoed the Taft-Hartley Labor act. This act helped expand federal control over labor quarrels and allowed the government to force a hiatus if a strike was considered horrendous to national security or well being [3]. Truman also intervened with American troops in the conflict between North Korea and South Korea and also supported the creation of the state of Israel in the Middle East. In short, Truman’s foreign policy created some of the basic principles and commitments that marked American foreign policy for the rest of the 20th century

Truman’s 4.4% election margin reflected with the pre-election polls predicting a Dewey victory ranging between 5% to 15% points [4]. After the election, analysts attributed the polls’ failure largely to completing their surveys too early. The polls themselves helped Truman’s late victory to overcome Dewey when press reports of their surveys showing Dewey ahead fueled the Democrats to mount late efforts to increase turnout, and made the Republicans overconfident. The election was also marked by Truman’s divisions in the Democratic party over civil rights and the Administration’s policy directed at containing Communism [4]. Another split was led by more liberal democrats, who objected to the president’s confrontational policies toward Communism and organized the progressive party, with its presidential choice Henry Wallace [4]. Wallace’s arguments, however, found only a limited audience in the Cold War America of the late 1940s. In the 1948 election, he garnered less than 3% of the vote. Two years later, Wallace left the Progressive Party after it condemned his statement in support of the United States and United Nations intervention in Korea. In 1952, he wrote an article, “Why I Was Wrong,” in which he stated that his defense of the Soviet Union was a misconception [8]. His criticism of the American cold war policies kept the spirit of debate and dissent alive during the Red