Let's say that Franklin Roosevelt suffers his fatal cerebral hemorrhage on October 12, 1944. This leaves his unpopular VP Henry Wallace, who has already been replaced on the Democratic ticket by Truman, as President less than a month before a presidential election. What happens next?
Oh you devil Victor Hatherley what a can of worms you've opened! OK, 1st, Wallace really did want to
be President(IOTL, in 1948, he ran for the job on a third party ticket)so I think we can assume he would
have stood for re-election. As for whether he would have kept Truman on as his running mate, or if not,
who he would have replaced Truman with, I'm just gonna throw my hands up in the air & say I DON'T
KNOW! Let's just assume that satisfactory arrangements were(somehow)made & move on.
Second, what would the Democrats have done? Wallace was quite popular among liberal Democrats
IOTL. But most conservative Democrats(especially those in the South)were cool to downright hostile to
him. They thought Wallace's politics were much too radical, & regarded him personally as a star-gaz-
ing idealist(in other words, impractical, silly, & downright stupid). But I think in this ATL most @
any rate would have seen opposing Wallace would risk of splitting the Democrats & giving the White
House to the Republicans. So I think most of the party would have rallied- though some quite
unhappily!- to Wallace.
Third, how would the 1944 election have turned out? Historians generally agree that in 1944 IOTL,
with WWII still raging, voters were reluctant to change horses- i.e., parties- in midstream & thus
voted for Roosevelt(SEE for example A SHORT HISTORY OF PRESIDENTAL ELECTIONS by Eugene H Rosenbum, 1967, section
on 1944). Wallace was of course not the known quantity FDR was. But that desire to play it safe
would still, I think, have lingered. Plus Wallace & the Democrats would have done everything they could
to wrap themselves in FDR's mantle("He would have wanted us to carry on" etc. etc.)
So @ this point one would say: Wallace would squeak out a victory. But waiting in the wings
was a little bomb that would have blown the Wallace candidacy to bits. Nicholas
Roerich was a Russian artist & mystic(he claimed he could communicate with the spiritual sphere)who
in the 1930's corresponded with then Secretrary of Agriculture Henry Wallace. In these writings,
Wallace sometimes called Roerich the "guru", FDR the "Flaming One" the "Wavering One" & referred
to "Dark Ones""Steadfast Ones" & "vermin". He even sponsored a Roerich expedition to Asia in 1934
to find new grasses for agricultural purposes. The expedition failed & Wallace cut his ties to
Roerich. But IOTL Americans of the 1940's were not as acquainted with eastern religions & mysticism
as they are now. Had this come out, Wallace would have been regarded as a nut job. In 1940,
when Wallace was running with FDR against Wendell Wilke, the Republicans actually succeeded in
getting ahold of these letters. Fortunately for Wallace, the Democrats had evidence that Wilkie was
carrying on an affair with the book editor of THE NEW YORK HERALD TRIBUNE. In what we would to-
day call "a balance of terror" both parties agreed not to divulge the dirt they had on each other. In
1944 in this ATL the Republicans would not have been so constrained(there were no such skeletons in
Dewey's closet!) They would have published the letters, & when the dust had settled Dewey would
have succeeded in doing what IOTL he twice failed to do- getting elected President.