Cactus Jack's Misfortune - Part IV
Though Vice President Douglas had helped hand the Democrats a fourth term in office, he was not the most popular man in Washington at the start of 1945. Many of the party officials had wanted Harry Truman instead of him, and the fact that he was a remarkably liberal justice during his time on the Supreme Court didn't help the conservative faction like him. Despite that he proved to be an effective mediator between the President and congress, especially as Roosevelt became ever more involved in ending the war with Japan before midterms.
Though Roosevelt was remarkably open with Douglas, especially considering the tight control that he maintained over Garner, Bankhead, Adams and Wallace, there was one area he kept the Vice President in the dark about, and that was the Manhattan Project.
The American nuclear program had been in development since early 1942, first in Tennessee, then in New Mexico when the open and barren desert proved to be more hospitable to a potential nuclear test. Though Roosevelt had expected the bomb to be used on Nazi Germany, the collapse and quarantine of that nation had necessitated that the bomb would be used on Japan if it was going to be used at all.
Outside of the Manhattan Project the collapse of Germany had created a quandary on what could be done with the land. Germany as a whole was heavily contaminated with anthrax, and according to British data the average plot of German land between Essen and Berlin would be dangerous to human habitation without extensive cleanup for at least another century.
Extensive cleanup however was not on the agenda and as a whole Germany, or whatever remained of it, was an extremely dangerous place. Guderian had almost certainly been overthrown by Nazi hardliners after his declaration of surrender, but whether those hardliners were able to seize power was unclear, with Berlin descending into civil war and the Red Army blasting their way into the city by the middle of February and declaring it pacified by the end of March after suffering more than sixty thousand casualties.
The Western Allies took a more strategic approach to the German problem, sending commando units into the quarantine zone to rescue scientists and other talented individuals. Beria did the same, but most scientists willingly fled to the American side of the quarantine zone, fearing poor treatment if they went east.
In fact, scientists weren't the only ones fleeing the quarantine zone. The flood of refugees into both the Soviet Union and liberated France/Italy was almost uncontrollable, leading to massive detention camps on both sides of the zone where the population of refugees was searched in order to discover Nazi war criminals. Josef Mengele was discovered that way, as was Adolf Eichmann, and with a great deal of the Nazi high command either dead or in custody, the Soviets and Western allies gathered to begin the process of discovering exactly what had happened with the Final Solution.
Eichmann had brought several suitcases full of documents and souvenirs from the camps with him out of the quarantine zone and these were used to sentence him to death, but only after he spent nearly one hundred hours being recorded by Allied officials detailing the process of planning the Final Solution as well as every last detail of actually carrying it out.
The Soviets, during their lightning rush into eastern Poland had encountered several intact extermination camps where the guards had simply fled rather than spend time killing off the last of the residents and thus risk being caught by the Red Army. These camps had been dedicated to the wholesale slaughter of Red Army prisoners of war, less than 15% of whom survived the war. (More often than not Beria would send survivors of these camps to act as gulag guards rather than expose the regular population of the USSR to 'cowardice'). A number of camps dedicated to exterminating Jews, Roma and other 'undesirables' were also extensively documented, the fleeing Nazis having little time to demolish them.
The death toll for the Final Solution, including all groups targeted (some studies conducted during the Cold War did not include Red Army POWs despite the fact that they were slated for extermination just as aggressively as the Jews or Roma) was determined as being between eight and ten million, with at least another five hundred thousand dissidents and other enemies of the state being purposefully starved to death in prison after fuel supplies dried up during the last days of the war and transportation to the extermination camps became impossible.
These trials resulted in the execution of nearly every single Nazi official above the rank of colonel who was involved, and lasted for two months, from May 7, 1945 to July 12, 1945. One of the only high ranking Nazi officials to survive was Admiral Doenitz, who had fled to the Western Allied side of the zone upon hearing of Guderian's surrender. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, though he remarked that Churchill and Roosevelt deserved worse.
Churchill and Roosevelt weren't listening though, Churchill was effectively dead in the water following extreme controversy surrounding Operation Vegetarian, and Roosevelt was reading a memo announcing that an atom bomb had been successfully tested at White Sands, creating a blast equal to that of a hundred thousand tons of dynamite.
Roosevelt would never get a chance to see this bomb in action because at that very moment, in between reading the memo and calling the scientists to congratulate them he sighed and then slumped forwards onto his desk, having suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Douglas, who was in the room with him at the time, went with the President to the hospital and was reported to have shed tears when President Roosevelt was pronounced dead a little less than five minutes later.
The shock of Roosevelt's death practically caused the nation to stand still, with combat operations on Formosa actually ceasing for an hour in the aftermath of the news. A noticeably shocked and saddened Douglas, who had lost not only his President but also one of his best friends in the world, was sworn in the next day, announcing that while nobody could live up to Franklin Roosevelt, he would do his best to try.
Upon returning to the White House President Douglas was made aware of the existence of the atom bomb and expressed reluctance to use such a terrible weapon in combat (Douglas feared more than anything that if the weapon were used on Japan then its use would become normalized, much like poison gas in the First World War and biological weapons in the Second).
To seek another opinion Douglas spoke to Supreme Commander Eisenhower, who told the new President that using the bomb would save far more lives than it would cost if it prevented an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. Douglas accepted this opinion, the ongoing battle of Formosa probably had some influence on this decision due to a Japanese promise that they would treat the island like it was a piece of Kyushu or Hokkaido. Nearly nineteen thousand American and Australian soldiers would die securing Formosa, a horrifying indication of what laid in wait on the Home Islands themselves.
Another concern is the Japanese presence in China, which itself is a hotbed of competing communist and nationalist sentiment. Douglas, recognizing that Beria will not remain an ally for long, begins to funnel aid to Chiang Kai-Shek and his nationalist government, helping them battle communist rebels as well as the ever weakening Japanese Army. Allied units are present in China as well, Douglas is an admirer of China and wishes to see it remain an ally of the United States well into the future, something that it will not be if Soviet backed groups gain power.
With all of this on his mind Douglas opts not to choose a Vice President until the 1948 convention, leaving the media buzzing that this new President is going to seek a term of his own…and sparking plenty of curiosity regarding who the Vice President could be.
Luckily for Douglas, still a relative novice when it comes to international relations, Beria's aggression in the quarantine zone was not due to insanity on his part but rather a genuine fear of assassination or a coup. Beria's brutal methods and heartless bureaucracy kept the USSR running during the war, but with relative peace upon them and no fear of annihilation at the hands of the Nazis, Beria has begun to notice no shortage of unfriendly eyes upon him. Thus he orders things like the invasion and annexation of Berlin and a slow encroachment into the quarantine zone, which causes no end of alarm from the Western Allies, who continue to hold a line stretching from Essen to Komstanz, interning and housing refugees fleeing from the nightmarish conditions at home, much to the chagrin of no shortage of French residents, who are unhappy that the border of their nation has essentially been turned into a refugee camp, full of Germans nonetheless.
And so it comes as no surprise when Beria's car is attacked by several gunmen as it approaches the Kremlin on August 3, 1945. Beria escapes unharmed but his mind is shot and he orders dozens killed, the Red Army seals off the city and much like his predecessor, Beria commits a purge, not of the Red Army (which is fiercely loyal to Beria since he has not purged them and tends to give them whatever they want) but of the government.
As the USSR bleeds, Churchill calls upon Douglas and asks him for support in declaring an end to the Western Allies' alliance to the USSR. Douglas, who is not amongst the supporters of Operation Vegetarian, says that he will think about it, and later that day signs an order authorizing the dropping of an atom bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
From an airbase in Formosa an American bomber takes off and four hours later an entire city erupts into flame. The Japanese do not respond to Douglas offering terms and so three days later the city of Kagoshima is obliterated as well. This time, despite a narrowly avoided coup from a number of hardliners, Emperor Hirohito surrenders. As of August 10, 1945 the Second World War is over.
As Japanese troops withdraw from what scraps of China and Korea they still cling to, Douglas is careful to maintain American military pressure over the area, denying access to Soviet troops beyond Manchuria, which they invaded in the dying days of the war. Most controversial amongst these actions was the barring of Soviet troops from northern Korea, which sparked a minor international incident but raised Douglas' profile considerably amongst the anti communist conservatives at home.
This international posturing is now recognized as the first actions of the Cold War but at the time Douglas did hope that once Beria was removed from power that the American-Soviet alliance could be repaired. However, even though Beria was not long for this earth, his successor was hardly more reasonable.
Sergei Kruglov, though he had succeeded Beria as the head of the NKVD, was not a Beria loyalist and dodged Beria's purge as much out of luck as skillful politics. He however had no interest in having to survive a second one and as autumn of 1945 drew to a close Beria was found dead and in the aftermath of the bloodshed that he had committed, Kruglov maneuvered himself into power, brokering heavily with Semyon Timoshenko of the Red Army and Lazar Kaganovich, who represented the rest of the government. These three did not always get along but an uneasy peace settled down as they recognized that they were all far too powerful to risk killing and thus sending the nation into chaos.
With chaos in the USSR averted, the war in Japan won and Asia proving to be the first major battleground of the Cold War, the 1946 midterms prove to be remarkably uneventful, with the Republican party gaining a few seats in both houses but not threatening the existing Democratic majorities. Douglas has been doing a pretty god job so far the consensus is, and even now that the war is over the economy is still good.
However, with many of the major hurdles of the first year of his presidency overcome Douglas finds himself looking inwards. Recalling his conversations with Supreme Commander Eisenhower, Douglas begins to pass a series of infrastructure programs dedicated to building a set of highways and other roads, as well as a set of nuclear power plants. Though Douglas is still haunted by his role in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Kagoshima he recognizes that nuclear power has a bright future, so long as it is used for purely peaceful methods.
Due to these developments, as well as Douglas' efforts to ramp down wartime security laws and censorship he is a popular President as he heads into the 1948 election. He runs largely unopposed in the primaries, barely even campaigning and instead letting his achievements speak for himself. But just a few weeks before the convention he makes his first major slip, by denouncing segregation and announcing that he would like to see the military integrated before he leaves office. This enrages many conservative Democrats and though Douglas finds himself adored by the minority and liberal vote, he realizes that he is suddenly in serious danger of not being nominated.
But to his relief the conservatives are not able to agree upon a candidate, instead supporting a splinter ticket of Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright. Douglas is nominated and reviews his choices, knowing that he must win at least a few southern electoral votes if he wishes to win a full term for himself. In desperation he calls his friend Dwight Eisenhower and asks for his advice before being struck by a very attractive idea.
Eisenhower respectfully declines Douglas' proposition that he come aboard as Vice President, but does give him some advice, which Douglas takes. The next morning he reviews his choices, knowing that his judgement must be perfect if he wants to win.
- Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace of Iowa
- Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky
- Senator Claude Pepper of Florida
- Senator Harry Truman of Missouri
The choices before him seem to have only flaws at first, Wallace is too liberal, Barkley too old. Claude Pepper approaches Douglas not long before the first vote and Douglas soon finds himself drawn to the fiery and outspoken Floridian, who id unapologetic in his support of civil rights and seems glad that there is finally a President who will openly support equality. Harry Truman is considered as well but instead of the vice presidency Douglas offers him a spot as Treasury Secretary, a tradeoff which Truman accepts.
Peppers is confirmed on the second ballot (Barkley puts up a fight but it is not enough) and the Democratic ticket proves to be an interesting, if controversial one.
Sensing weakness the Republicans engage in a fierce primary battle, believing that 1948 will finally be the year that they break the Democrats' hold on the White House. In the race is everyone from Earl Warren to Harold Stassen to Thomas Dewey to Arthur Vandenberg. The convention hall nomination is fierce but Earl Warren, the front runner for much of the primaries, is nominated on the second ballot, choosing Harold Stassen as his running mate.
Both tickets are exceptionally popular and well regarded, with the Thurmond/Wright ticket limited to the south and trailing well behind both major parties. But even if it isn't very large it is durable and feeds upon the pro civil rights comments made by both candidates. Warren admits that segregation is not to his liking towards the end of the campaign and Douglas meets with Warren to tell him that he would be an excellent Supreme Court justice. Perhaps in a later administration though.
The race is close and as Election Day arrives all of the candidates hold their breath, awaiting the results and wondering if the Democrats will win a fifth election and close out a full two decades in office.
Election night ends, millions across the nation either cheer or scowl, and President Douglas calls Warren to congratulate him on a well run campaign and to tell him good luck next time. Warren takes that to heart far more than Douglas could ever realize.
President William Douglas/Vice President Claude Pepper - 283 EV
Governor Earl Warren/Former Governor Harold Stassen - 220 EV
Senator Strom Thurmond/Governor Fielding Wright - 28 EV
Though Vice President Douglas had helped hand the Democrats a fourth term in office, he was not the most popular man in Washington at the start of 1945. Many of the party officials had wanted Harry Truman instead of him, and the fact that he was a remarkably liberal justice during his time on the Supreme Court didn't help the conservative faction like him. Despite that he proved to be an effective mediator between the President and congress, especially as Roosevelt became ever more involved in ending the war with Japan before midterms.
Though Roosevelt was remarkably open with Douglas, especially considering the tight control that he maintained over Garner, Bankhead, Adams and Wallace, there was one area he kept the Vice President in the dark about, and that was the Manhattan Project.
The American nuclear program had been in development since early 1942, first in Tennessee, then in New Mexico when the open and barren desert proved to be more hospitable to a potential nuclear test. Though Roosevelt had expected the bomb to be used on Nazi Germany, the collapse and quarantine of that nation had necessitated that the bomb would be used on Japan if it was going to be used at all.
Outside of the Manhattan Project the collapse of Germany had created a quandary on what could be done with the land. Germany as a whole was heavily contaminated with anthrax, and according to British data the average plot of German land between Essen and Berlin would be dangerous to human habitation without extensive cleanup for at least another century.
Extensive cleanup however was not on the agenda and as a whole Germany, or whatever remained of it, was an extremely dangerous place. Guderian had almost certainly been overthrown by Nazi hardliners after his declaration of surrender, but whether those hardliners were able to seize power was unclear, with Berlin descending into civil war and the Red Army blasting their way into the city by the middle of February and declaring it pacified by the end of March after suffering more than sixty thousand casualties.
The Western Allies took a more strategic approach to the German problem, sending commando units into the quarantine zone to rescue scientists and other talented individuals. Beria did the same, but most scientists willingly fled to the American side of the quarantine zone, fearing poor treatment if they went east.
In fact, scientists weren't the only ones fleeing the quarantine zone. The flood of refugees into both the Soviet Union and liberated France/Italy was almost uncontrollable, leading to massive detention camps on both sides of the zone where the population of refugees was searched in order to discover Nazi war criminals. Josef Mengele was discovered that way, as was Adolf Eichmann, and with a great deal of the Nazi high command either dead or in custody, the Soviets and Western allies gathered to begin the process of discovering exactly what had happened with the Final Solution.
Eichmann had brought several suitcases full of documents and souvenirs from the camps with him out of the quarantine zone and these were used to sentence him to death, but only after he spent nearly one hundred hours being recorded by Allied officials detailing the process of planning the Final Solution as well as every last detail of actually carrying it out.
The Soviets, during their lightning rush into eastern Poland had encountered several intact extermination camps where the guards had simply fled rather than spend time killing off the last of the residents and thus risk being caught by the Red Army. These camps had been dedicated to the wholesale slaughter of Red Army prisoners of war, less than 15% of whom survived the war. (More often than not Beria would send survivors of these camps to act as gulag guards rather than expose the regular population of the USSR to 'cowardice'). A number of camps dedicated to exterminating Jews, Roma and other 'undesirables' were also extensively documented, the fleeing Nazis having little time to demolish them.
The death toll for the Final Solution, including all groups targeted (some studies conducted during the Cold War did not include Red Army POWs despite the fact that they were slated for extermination just as aggressively as the Jews or Roma) was determined as being between eight and ten million, with at least another five hundred thousand dissidents and other enemies of the state being purposefully starved to death in prison after fuel supplies dried up during the last days of the war and transportation to the extermination camps became impossible.
These trials resulted in the execution of nearly every single Nazi official above the rank of colonel who was involved, and lasted for two months, from May 7, 1945 to July 12, 1945. One of the only high ranking Nazi officials to survive was Admiral Doenitz, who had fled to the Western Allied side of the zone upon hearing of Guderian's surrender. He was sentenced to ten years in prison, though he remarked that Churchill and Roosevelt deserved worse.
Churchill and Roosevelt weren't listening though, Churchill was effectively dead in the water following extreme controversy surrounding Operation Vegetarian, and Roosevelt was reading a memo announcing that an atom bomb had been successfully tested at White Sands, creating a blast equal to that of a hundred thousand tons of dynamite.
Roosevelt would never get a chance to see this bomb in action because at that very moment, in between reading the memo and calling the scientists to congratulate them he sighed and then slumped forwards onto his desk, having suffered a sudden cerebral hemorrhage. Vice President Douglas, who was in the room with him at the time, went with the President to the hospital and was reported to have shed tears when President Roosevelt was pronounced dead a little less than five minutes later.
The shock of Roosevelt's death practically caused the nation to stand still, with combat operations on Formosa actually ceasing for an hour in the aftermath of the news. A noticeably shocked and saddened Douglas, who had lost not only his President but also one of his best friends in the world, was sworn in the next day, announcing that while nobody could live up to Franklin Roosevelt, he would do his best to try.
Upon returning to the White House President Douglas was made aware of the existence of the atom bomb and expressed reluctance to use such a terrible weapon in combat (Douglas feared more than anything that if the weapon were used on Japan then its use would become normalized, much like poison gas in the First World War and biological weapons in the Second).
To seek another opinion Douglas spoke to Supreme Commander Eisenhower, who told the new President that using the bomb would save far more lives than it would cost if it prevented an invasion of the Japanese Home Islands. Douglas accepted this opinion, the ongoing battle of Formosa probably had some influence on this decision due to a Japanese promise that they would treat the island like it was a piece of Kyushu or Hokkaido. Nearly nineteen thousand American and Australian soldiers would die securing Formosa, a horrifying indication of what laid in wait on the Home Islands themselves.
Another concern is the Japanese presence in China, which itself is a hotbed of competing communist and nationalist sentiment. Douglas, recognizing that Beria will not remain an ally for long, begins to funnel aid to Chiang Kai-Shek and his nationalist government, helping them battle communist rebels as well as the ever weakening Japanese Army. Allied units are present in China as well, Douglas is an admirer of China and wishes to see it remain an ally of the United States well into the future, something that it will not be if Soviet backed groups gain power.
With all of this on his mind Douglas opts not to choose a Vice President until the 1948 convention, leaving the media buzzing that this new President is going to seek a term of his own…and sparking plenty of curiosity regarding who the Vice President could be.
Luckily for Douglas, still a relative novice when it comes to international relations, Beria's aggression in the quarantine zone was not due to insanity on his part but rather a genuine fear of assassination or a coup. Beria's brutal methods and heartless bureaucracy kept the USSR running during the war, but with relative peace upon them and no fear of annihilation at the hands of the Nazis, Beria has begun to notice no shortage of unfriendly eyes upon him. Thus he orders things like the invasion and annexation of Berlin and a slow encroachment into the quarantine zone, which causes no end of alarm from the Western Allies, who continue to hold a line stretching from Essen to Komstanz, interning and housing refugees fleeing from the nightmarish conditions at home, much to the chagrin of no shortage of French residents, who are unhappy that the border of their nation has essentially been turned into a refugee camp, full of Germans nonetheless.
And so it comes as no surprise when Beria's car is attacked by several gunmen as it approaches the Kremlin on August 3, 1945. Beria escapes unharmed but his mind is shot and he orders dozens killed, the Red Army seals off the city and much like his predecessor, Beria commits a purge, not of the Red Army (which is fiercely loyal to Beria since he has not purged them and tends to give them whatever they want) but of the government.
As the USSR bleeds, Churchill calls upon Douglas and asks him for support in declaring an end to the Western Allies' alliance to the USSR. Douglas, who is not amongst the supporters of Operation Vegetarian, says that he will think about it, and later that day signs an order authorizing the dropping of an atom bomb on the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
From an airbase in Formosa an American bomber takes off and four hours later an entire city erupts into flame. The Japanese do not respond to Douglas offering terms and so three days later the city of Kagoshima is obliterated as well. This time, despite a narrowly avoided coup from a number of hardliners, Emperor Hirohito surrenders. As of August 10, 1945 the Second World War is over.
As Japanese troops withdraw from what scraps of China and Korea they still cling to, Douglas is careful to maintain American military pressure over the area, denying access to Soviet troops beyond Manchuria, which they invaded in the dying days of the war. Most controversial amongst these actions was the barring of Soviet troops from northern Korea, which sparked a minor international incident but raised Douglas' profile considerably amongst the anti communist conservatives at home.
This international posturing is now recognized as the first actions of the Cold War but at the time Douglas did hope that once Beria was removed from power that the American-Soviet alliance could be repaired. However, even though Beria was not long for this earth, his successor was hardly more reasonable.
Sergei Kruglov, though he had succeeded Beria as the head of the NKVD, was not a Beria loyalist and dodged Beria's purge as much out of luck as skillful politics. He however had no interest in having to survive a second one and as autumn of 1945 drew to a close Beria was found dead and in the aftermath of the bloodshed that he had committed, Kruglov maneuvered himself into power, brokering heavily with Semyon Timoshenko of the Red Army and Lazar Kaganovich, who represented the rest of the government. These three did not always get along but an uneasy peace settled down as they recognized that they were all far too powerful to risk killing and thus sending the nation into chaos.
With chaos in the USSR averted, the war in Japan won and Asia proving to be the first major battleground of the Cold War, the 1946 midterms prove to be remarkably uneventful, with the Republican party gaining a few seats in both houses but not threatening the existing Democratic majorities. Douglas has been doing a pretty god job so far the consensus is, and even now that the war is over the economy is still good.
However, with many of the major hurdles of the first year of his presidency overcome Douglas finds himself looking inwards. Recalling his conversations with Supreme Commander Eisenhower, Douglas begins to pass a series of infrastructure programs dedicated to building a set of highways and other roads, as well as a set of nuclear power plants. Though Douglas is still haunted by his role in the atomic bombings of Nagasaki and Kagoshima he recognizes that nuclear power has a bright future, so long as it is used for purely peaceful methods.
Due to these developments, as well as Douglas' efforts to ramp down wartime security laws and censorship he is a popular President as he heads into the 1948 election. He runs largely unopposed in the primaries, barely even campaigning and instead letting his achievements speak for himself. But just a few weeks before the convention he makes his first major slip, by denouncing segregation and announcing that he would like to see the military integrated before he leaves office. This enrages many conservative Democrats and though Douglas finds himself adored by the minority and liberal vote, he realizes that he is suddenly in serious danger of not being nominated.
But to his relief the conservatives are not able to agree upon a candidate, instead supporting a splinter ticket of Strom Thurmond and Fielding Wright. Douglas is nominated and reviews his choices, knowing that he must win at least a few southern electoral votes if he wishes to win a full term for himself. In desperation he calls his friend Dwight Eisenhower and asks for his advice before being struck by a very attractive idea.
Eisenhower respectfully declines Douglas' proposition that he come aboard as Vice President, but does give him some advice, which Douglas takes. The next morning he reviews his choices, knowing that his judgement must be perfect if he wants to win.
- Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace of Iowa
- Senator Alben Barkley of Kentucky
- Senator Claude Pepper of Florida
- Senator Harry Truman of Missouri
The choices before him seem to have only flaws at first, Wallace is too liberal, Barkley too old. Claude Pepper approaches Douglas not long before the first vote and Douglas soon finds himself drawn to the fiery and outspoken Floridian, who id unapologetic in his support of civil rights and seems glad that there is finally a President who will openly support equality. Harry Truman is considered as well but instead of the vice presidency Douglas offers him a spot as Treasury Secretary, a tradeoff which Truman accepts.
Peppers is confirmed on the second ballot (Barkley puts up a fight but it is not enough) and the Democratic ticket proves to be an interesting, if controversial one.
Sensing weakness the Republicans engage in a fierce primary battle, believing that 1948 will finally be the year that they break the Democrats' hold on the White House. In the race is everyone from Earl Warren to Harold Stassen to Thomas Dewey to Arthur Vandenberg. The convention hall nomination is fierce but Earl Warren, the front runner for much of the primaries, is nominated on the second ballot, choosing Harold Stassen as his running mate.
Both tickets are exceptionally popular and well regarded, with the Thurmond/Wright ticket limited to the south and trailing well behind both major parties. But even if it isn't very large it is durable and feeds upon the pro civil rights comments made by both candidates. Warren admits that segregation is not to his liking towards the end of the campaign and Douglas meets with Warren to tell him that he would be an excellent Supreme Court justice. Perhaps in a later administration though.
The race is close and as Election Day arrives all of the candidates hold their breath, awaiting the results and wondering if the Democrats will win a fifth election and close out a full two decades in office.
Election night ends, millions across the nation either cheer or scowl, and President Douglas calls Warren to congratulate him on a well run campaign and to tell him good luck next time. Warren takes that to heart far more than Douglas could ever realize.
President William Douglas/Vice President Claude Pepper - 283 EV
Governor Earl Warren/Former Governor Harold Stassen - 220 EV
Senator Strom Thurmond/Governor Fielding Wright - 28 EV
