Progressive party: Election of 1948

Election of 1948

At Philadelphia in July, 1948, a new third party, organized as a challenge to the Democratic party, adopted the name Progressive and nominated Henry A. Wallace for President and Senator Glen H. Taylor for Vice President. Endorsed by the Communist party and by the American Labor party of New York state, the Progressive party accused the Truman administration of failing to cooperate with the Soviet Union to end the cold war and advocated repeal of the Taft-Hartley Act and reestablishment of wartime price controls. Its candidates won no electoral votes and only slightly more than 1 million popular votes as Truman defeated Thomas E. Dewey, the Republican candidate, by a close margin.

Bibliography

See K. M. Schmidt, Henry A. Wallace: Quixotic Crusade, 1948 (1961); C. D. MacDougall, Gideon's Army (3 vol., 1965). See also bibliography under progressivism.

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