But at least Taft would fight back and actually defend the 80th Congress's record. Dewey's strategy of trying to distance himself from the 80th Congress was never going to work because people aren't going to elect a Republican president if they are not happy with what a Republican Congress has been doing. The 1948 Republican candidate's fortunes were always going to rise or fall depending on how the public perceived the achievements of the 80th Congress.
But in fact Dewey did finish substantially ahead of the GOP congressional ticket (just not quite far enough ahead). "Nationally, he [Truman] ran behind his party's congressional ticket by 4 percent while Dewey ran ahead of his party's congressional ticket by over 5 percent. In nineteen states Truman took the state electors but received fewer votes than the Democratic party-endorsed congressional candidates." https://books.google.com/books?id=bqseBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA204
The 80th Congress was in fact very unpopular, and having one of its less popular leaders (Taft) defend it would not somehow make it popular. At least Taft could have helped a little bit by having the Turnip Day session do something for refugees from eastern Europe, for example. Dewey had to--and did--defend the Congress in general terms, but to associate himself too closely with it would almost certainly have meant a worse loss for him than in OTL.
And again--I just don't see Taft carrying New York state (which even Dewey barely carried despite the inroads Wallace made into the 1944 FDR vote). And without the GOP carrying New York, Truman would have won outright even if he had lost Ohio, California, and Illinois. Indeed, without New York the GOP ticket could have carried all the other states which Dewey either won or lost by less than six percentage points--and it would still have fallen short of a majority in the Electoral College. And incidentally, besides New York there were other industrial states which Dewey won which I doubt that Taft could have: Michigan, Maryland, Delaware, Connecticut. Nor do I see any reason to think Taft would carry California, which still had a Progressive Republican tradition, which had gone heavily for FDR in 1944 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1944 and which was close in 1948 largely because of Earl Warren's being on the ticket.
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