DBWI: What if Eisenhower did not run for POTUS in 1948?

In 1948, General Dwight Eisenhower was elected President of the United States in a 42 state landslide over Senator Robert Taft (States Right Democrat Theodore Bilbo won only his home state of Mississippi).

Ike decided to run that year when President Harry Truman promised not to run.

Looking back on that election, a historian wrote that Eisenhower was very close to not being a candidate in 1948. Previously, Eisenhower never voted in an election in his life.

Had Eisenhower not run, would Truman have been able to win in 1948? And if Truman won, would Eisenhower have run in 1952?
 
I saw polls from the era that had Thomas Dewey winning any '48 election. No idea how he'd turn out. Assuming Truman ran and won...well, not really knowing him beyond his nuking of Japan I'd have to assume some continuation of New Dealist policy? Perhaps a more left America?
 
OOC: I'm assuming that Truman withdrew very early (late '47?), and that Taft had built up a head of steam from the earliest primaries, with Dewey either not running or having lost a lot of popularity within the party.

Eisenhower running as a Democrat is only possible if he and his advisers (a.) don't believe they can beat Taft for the Republican nomination, and (b.) are convinced that a Taft presidency is sufficiently bad for America that Ike should willingly become a Democrat (Truman being a non-contender would be an important factor in that decision). Both of those conditions are plausible, IMO.

Ike being drafted at the Democratic convention in early July merely because Taft has won the GOP nomination in late June is much less plausible, even though there were some fairly liberal Democrats who actually wanted that at the time (Illionois senate candidate Paul Douglas, for one.)
 
IC:
If Eisenhower isn't such a wildly popular 'above politics' POTUS during his two terms then I don't think the GOP would be forced to go with Rockefeller in '56 in order to renew their brand after the two humiliating defeats.

I think it is interesting to consider that many conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats consider the Eisenhower era to have been the wilderness years for their respective ideologies.

I've read one opinion that his adminstration's discision to halt MacArthur at the 38th Parallel during the reconquest of South Korea in late '50 was a watershed moment that eventually led to the Vietnam war. The logic being that the wildly successful UN defence against the overextended Chinese forces that attempted during early '51 to retake Seoul gave American military planners false confidence in their ability to wage war in mainland Asia. Maybe if the armistice hadn't been signed exactly a year after Ike committed US forces to Korea then a prolonged war on the peninsula could wind up unpopular at home, eventually making the US political elite reconsider the wisdom of adventurism in SE Asia during the sixties.

I wonder if perhaps in the longterm no Eisenhower prevents the realignment of the seventies and eighties in US politics? No Connally 'Southern Strategy' in '76? No 'Kemponomics' in the late eighties?
 
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