DEWEY DEFEATS TRUMAN

EvolvedSaurian

We've all seen it(all americans and most foreigners). The famous, erroneus newspaper headline.

So what if the Chicago Tribune was right?
 

WhatIsAUserName

Dewey, by 1948, was in full support of the Marshall Plan and US involvement in the rest of the world. I guess he would have attempted to fight Communism as well. For the Korean War, I wonder if Dewey would have decided to take the fight into China, using nukes if necessary, as Truman attempted to keep the war "limited."
 

Strategos' Risk

Maybe he'll be more supportive of the Nationalists, and they end up getting both Taiwan and Hainan. I think S.M. Stirling was on to something when he had the Alliance getting both islands, rather than just Taiwan.
 

Xen

Banned
How would this effect Civil Rights? The Armed Services was integrated in 1948, and baseball in 1947 so it wont effect that at all, but what about the other things in the 1950's?
 

Fabilius

WhatIsAUserName said:
Why would that be?
Click to expand...

Because one of the first computers would then have turned out to have calculated wrongly. Everyone predicted that Dewey would win (or almost everyone) and laughed when some "computer" predicted Truman would win.

When the computer turned out to be right, more people got interested in this new technology.
 

Bulldawg85

Korean War

Perhaps there may not have even been a Korean War. After all, one of the reasons why the war occurred was because the US officials had made the speech discussing where the line was in Asia and it did not include SK. Perhaps if it did the Russians would have restrained Kim Il Sung.
 

Mark Ford

This would call into doubt the political future of Eisenhower and Nixon. Or does Eisenhower contest the 1952 election as a Democrat?
 

Derek Jackson

Mark Ford said:
This would call into doubt the political future of Eisenhower and Nixon. Or does Eisenhower contest the 1952 election as a Democrat?
Click to expand...

I am assuming that Nixon would carry on as he did, aiming for a longer time in the Senate rather than becoming VP after two years

Query now much was it being in the mid term a factor in Nixon's California win in 1950?
 

Dr Pervez Hoodbhoy

Banned
Fabilius said:
Because one of the first computers would then have turned out to have calculated wrongly. Everyone predicted that Dewey would win (or almost everyone) and laughed when some "computer" predicted Truman would win.

When the computer turned out to be right, more people got interested in this new technology.
Click to expand...

Nobody says you can't change the computer's prediction. The POD doesn't have to be on election day.
 

Grimm Reaper

A chilling possibility.

Truman's importance to the nation, especially considering the potential split in the Democrats with the die-hard practitioners of Jim Crow and the far left under Wallace, has long been badly underestimated. I wouldn't even rule out that he wound up second to FDR in terms of importance.

With Truman losing because of the Dixiecrats and Wallace, it is not impossible to imagine the US with one national party(GOP), and two fringe movements, neither of which can win an election.
 

Tgibbs

Split Democrats?

I agree with Grimm Reaper up to a point.

Truman's defeat, and the three-way split in the Democratic Party, would keep the Democrats from winning the presidency during the short term. But the party probably would have continued to dominate Congress.

In OTL, Truman barely won in 1948, but the Democrats won Congress easily. Dixiecrats and Wallace supporters didn't vote for Truman, but they did vote for Democratic congressional candidates. If Dewey edges out Truman in Illinois, Ohio, and California -- and becomes president -- I doubt it changes the congressional outcome. Hubert Humphrey, to look at one example, would have won in a landslide in Minnesota regardless of who won the presidency. The same is true of other candidates in other states.

So the Democrats continue to do fine on the Congressional level. But they have trouble winning the presidency in 1952 and 1956. Of course, they didn't win those elections anyway. Twelve years is an eternity in politics, and by 1960, circumstances might change and the Democrats could win again.

A lot of this depends on how well Dewey does.
 

oberdada

Gone Fishin'
VoCSe said:
Nobody says you can't change the computer's prediction. The POD doesn't have to be on election day.
Click to expand...

You could, but it still wouldn't have that effect as it had in OTL, unless you also change the predictions.

Almost everybody expected Dewey to win, exept the Computer (and maybe Truman himself).

And the COmputer was right!
 

danielb1

oberdada said:
You could, but it still wouldn't have that effect as it had in OTL, unless you also change the predictions.

Almost everybody expected Dewey to win, exept the Computer (and maybe Truman himself).

And the COmputer was right!
Click to expand...

I thought the real big computer prediction effects came from 1952, though, with UNIVAC. Most pundits predicted a fairly close Eisenhower-Stevenson race, while UNIVAC correctly predicted an Eisenhower landslide.

The effects of a Dewey presidency might result in a large centrist Republican party becoming dominant (Dewey, while to the right of Truman, was hardly a 'conservative'), while splinter factions of the Democrats occupy the fringes of right and left.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the Democrat's split would be that severe. Probably the Democratic leadership realizes that the 1948 loss was due to party factionalization and decides to re-merge with either the Progressives, Dixiecrats, or both. The third result will likely see politics much like OTL (it might be possible for the Dems to unite behind Eisenhower as a compromise candidate in 1952). Of the other two, a Democrat-Progressive pairing would suffer from a 'Red' tarring, and see something like I suggested earlier. A Democrat-Dixiecrat pairing would not result in such factionalization (the progressives were too weak), but would have interesting long-term effects like giving black and other minority votes to Republicans and either killing off or radically altering the Religious Right movement.
 

1940LaSalle

Mark Ford said:
This would call into doubt the political future of Eisenhower and Nixon. Or does Eisenhower contest the 1952 election as a Democrat?
Click to expand...

I don't think so. He turned down the '48 nomination as a Democrat, so I don't think he'd be amenable to another offer in '52. I could see him as perhaps Dewey's Secretary of Defense (John Foster Dulles would have been the Secretary of State). After his tenure, I could see Ike retiring in comfort to his farm in Gettysburg, unencumbered by the health problems that plagued him as president, living perhaps another 10 years more than he did.

Nixon would clearly remain a senator from California through Dewey's tenure. The question is the identity of the GOP's nominee in '56 (assuming Dewey served two terms). Nixon probably would not have had the clout as a relatively young senator. I'd think in terms of a young Nelson Rockefeller as a possible nominee, with perhaps Nixon as his running mate. If not Rockefeller, possibly Vice-President Earl Warren--but if Warren were the nominee in '56, his running mate would have to be someone not from California (e.g., Massachusetts senator Henry Cabot Lodge), so Nixon remains in the senate longer still. I'm guessing the latter--Warren for president--would have been more likely (he was considered presidential timber in the mid-to-late '40s), and Nixon might well have retired from the Senate sometime in the 1980s.

One thing that HASN'T been mentioned is the possible effects of a Dewey presidency on Joe McCarthy or vice versa. I'd suggest that McCarthy would probably have not evolved into the loose cannon he became: it would be no trivial matter to aim at one's own party in power. Indeed, it's entirely possible that McCarthy would be no more than a minor footnote to history--a one-term senator from Wisconsin, whose term was largely forgettable. Upon further reflection, that would have meant a lesser role for the HUAC, and in turn, less of a spotlight for Congressman Richard Nixon--and that in turn might well have delayed his entry into the Senate or denied it altogether.

On the whole, I'd guess that a Dewey presidency might have solidified the northeastern/moderate wing of the Republicans, postponing the shift to the right.
 

Strategos' Risk

You know, if Dewey wins, the Rockefeller/Vandenburg progressive Republican wing of the party doesn't die out. Couldn't some Democrats defect to them?
 
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