“I never give them hell. I just tell the truth, and they think it’s hell,” said President Harry Truman about his Republican political opponents during a hard-fought 1948 campaign for the White House. Truman’s feisty campaign and come-from-behind victory excited voters while confounding pollsters and pundits who had predicted an easy win for GOP candidate Thomas Dewey, a former New York governor and gang-busting Manhattan prosecutor.
The election of 1948 was a close, cliff-hanging contest like the emotional roller coaster of today’s 2024 political campaign between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump. Then as now, the populace is divided and the stakes are high as the nation hurtles toward an unpredictable election and an uncertain future.
A 2024 election that was trending toward a Trump triumph has been upended in the last month. An assassination attempt against Trump, the abdication of President Joe Biden and the ascendancy of Harris were news events viewed by millions of Americans this summer.
Democrats who were morose over the moribund Biden candidacy were ecstatic when Kamala Harris brought life and laughter back into their political party. Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz is proving to be an engaging and good-humored running mate for Harris, while Trump’s vice presidential pick, JD Vance, seems to be a not-ready-for-primetime player in the theater of national politics.
Trump had expected to score an easy victory against Biden, especially after Biden’s dismal debate performance earlier this summer. Instead, Biden’s departure from the campaign left Trump complaining about having to battle a different opponent. Harris and Walz may be laughing all the way to the White House. While Trump has become more angry and unhinged in his online comments and speeches, Harris and Walz are spreading their “politics of joy” to huge crowds. Democrats are feeling a palpable sense of relief now that they have two energetic campaigners named Harris and Walz who are girding for battle against Trump and Vance.
Political polling and momentum are on the side of the Harris campaign, and enthusiasm has been high at her spirited rallies that have drawn huge crowds in such battleground states as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia. Absurdly and insanely, Trump has claimed recently that the Harris crowds were faked and that his own political speeches drew more people than the inspiring oratory of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. Still, despite all his faults, foibles, falsehoods and flirtation with fascism, Trump remains a formidable foe who could indeed win in November or who could again wreak havoc on the American body politic if he loses, just as Trump’s MAGA mobs did after his loss in 2020 when they brought domestic terrorism to Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
Trump and his minions are gearing up for an authoritarian America where courts and Congress are in the pocket of the president. In 2022, Trump huffed that his mythical “stolen election” was an excuse to gut the U.S. Constitution. “A Massive Fraud of this type and magnitude allows for the termination of all rules, regulations and articles, even those found in the Constitution,” he posted on his sadly misnamed Truth Social online platform. Trump has vowed to pardon MAGA mobsters who stormed the Capitol in 2021, and if he is re-elected the atavistic agenda of the right-wing Project 2025 will be foisted upon this nation, a governmental agenda that Harvard political scientist Theda Skocpol recently called “a full prep for an authoritarian takeover.”
Truman knew about the dangers of authoritarianism, but he voiced hope that Americans would resist it. He said, “The dictators of the world say that if you tell a lie often enough, people will believe it. Well, if you tell the truth often enough, they’ll believe it and go along with you.” Truman knew about reactionary politicians who would tar their opponents with the brush of Bolshevism. “Socialism is their name for almost anything that helps all the people,” said Truman.
Voters today should remember Truman’s words from 1948: “It isn’t important who is ahead at one time or another in an election or a horse race. It’s the horse that comes in first at the finish line that counts.”
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