I just found out, via my visit to the excellent Jane at Home exhibition in Toronto's Urbanspace Gallery, that Jane Jacobs had supported Wendell Wilkie's bid for the American presidency in 1940. 24 at the time, Jacobs disliked Roosevelt's opting for a third term. (The exhibit also quotes her as saying later that Wilkie would have been a terrible president.)
Was there any chance of Wilkie managing to win the presidency in 1940? I ask this as someone who knows next to nothing about this particular episode in American history. It does seem to me that a Wilkie victory could have had pretty significant consequences domestically and internationally. What would have happened to the New Deal, for instance, or to the United States' relationship to the outside world?