CNN Debate Rules Would Have Barred Henry Wallace in 1948

Posted on by June 25, 2024

Henry Wallace in 1948 was only certified for the ballot in eleven states, at the time of the Progressive Party’s presidential convention, held July 24-25.  See Curtis MacDougall’s history book about the Wallace campaign, “Gideon’s Army”, page 445, volume two.  Those eleven states only had 192 electoral votes.

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CNN Debate Rules Would Have Barred Henry Wallace in 1948 — 18 Comments

  1. Those rules would have likely barred States Rights Democrat (or “Dixiecrat”) Strom Thurmond as well.

  2. Yes, because that campaign was not launched until July, the same month the Democratic National Convention added a civil rights plank to the Democratic platform.

  3. Obbob / John Taylor Bowles – is that a real name btw? It just occurred to me both John and bowl are words for toilet. Sorry if it is, I’m not trying to be mean on purpose.

    As you go back to the suspected candidates, further and further back, you start to run into states that had no such thing as ballot access because they had no government printed ballots.

    South Carolina didn’t have them before 1950. Georgia, 1922.

    Ballot access for third party and independent presidential candidates wasn’t really an issue before the 1930s great depression, when many states made it much harder due to fear of a communist takeover..

    Polling was not a serious thing until home phones became common in the 1950s and 60s. In 1948,”Dewey beats Truman” famous newspaper headline was because there was a significant wealth disparity between those who had home phones to be polled and those who didn’t.

    Before radio became widespread in the 1920s and 30s, you couldn’t have had a national debate. You’d have to have had a bunch of regional stops where people could attend in person, and newspapers could write about it for the people in their local distribution market who couldn’t be there.

  6. I suppose they could have been conducted in town squares and through the horse and buggy mail hitching post.

  7. George Washington would have been barred from the 1792 election debates by CNN.
    In 1792 he only would have been on enough ballots to win 43 electoral votes out of a needed 68 vote majority.

  8. There were no ballots in 1792, fool you crazy. That was a full century in the future. Y’all Cray Cray for real for real! Some states didn’t get them til, like, last century. 7 states in the 1900s in additional to all them states that wasn’t states get back then in them days. The last two states was in the 1920s and 1950 afore them got government printed ballots, nigga! Like, um, LOL!

  9. Curiously there was a Republican debate in 1948 between Dewey and Stassen, with 80 million radio listeners. At the time there were only 350,000 TV’s.

    There was also a debate between the Socialist Norman Thomas as the Socialist Workers nominee. The Socialists refused to nominate Wallace because he refused to distance himself from the Communists. The Socialist Labor candidate chose not to debate Thomas because the Socialist Worker had been invited.

  11. Well that went about as expected: Biden was a complete vegetable, CNN’s blatant rigging of the debate backfired, and with no RFK present to challenge his globalist pro-big pharma policies, Trump’s mediocre showing droning on and on about illegal immigrants and nothing else still handedly won him the debate. What a waste of time and money for all involved. What a wasted opportunity to have a real presidential debate on a more serious platform like X.

  12. Wrong as usual. Biden being a complete vegetable was exactly what his team tried and failed to disprove by offering up the most unfavorable terms they could manage in response to “anytime, anywhere”

    They blocked off over a week of the presidents time. Isolated him from distractions. Grilled all day every day with the top national and may be international debate prep, policy wonk, image and acting consulting coaches – of course they had access to every Trump tape and tweet and talking point ever.

    If they wanted to use performance enhancing drugs, they have teams of top medical professionals. Nobody was urine testing. They could joke about it and still do it anyway.

    Maybe they did, and this was the best they could do despite all that.

    Trump used his time, campaign money, and in kind resources very wisely by accepting this loaded counterchallenge.

    Mr. Brain Worm was also a winner by not being there. Had he been there, few viewers would have got past his frog in throat, throat cancer, oral std, or whatever that is. Trump would have come off even better in comparison, regardless of what you think of any of their policy views.

    Since the worm wasn’t there, he picks up support (as does not voting) by team Biden’s monumental failure. As in, it was epic enough to deserve actual monuments and epics. Trump does too, but most of what Biden had to shed was already strongly anti Trump – far more than pro Biden – so Trump doesn’t pick up all that much.

    Brain worm benefits most for now.

    But not enough to win. It’s not totally impossible for that to change but extremely unlikely.

    That means that eventually he will shed too.

    So where do they go? Some might go back to the big guy. By then, this will have been months ago. People have short attention spans, although they will get endless reminders. But, come on, man. It wasn’t just a cold. That’s complete malarkey. They will get plenty of reminders in the form of more Biden face plants, both figuratively and literally.

    How is September debate set to go for them, providing it’s not cancelled? Any other, in the unlikely case they accept one?

    Trump hit a lot of points besides illegal invasion, although that in fact is the biggest existential problem rn.

    Trump kicked ass. Granted, it’s a very old and decrepit ass he kicked, but that’s the ass party’s fault for not putting up a better ass for him to kick.

    X, or anyone else, is free to try to put something together. I don’t see team Biden accepting – I still don’t think his nomination is in danger, but abc in September very well could be. I’d love to see Trump-Kennedy. Especially with an empty Biden podium, perhaps populated by a dead duck or chicken.

    Trump would beat Kennedy as well. You can agree or disagree however much or little on policy. Very few people will get past audiovisual cues to prioritize that.

    If Trump doesn’t work with X or Fox or who ever to make that happen, he’s not very smart. He may not be. Some of the time he makes brilliant moves, like needling Biden and XiNN into making this self goal. Sometimes he screws up, like slumming with the LNC.

    I recommend putting pressure on Trump to do it. If you’re a brain worm fan, you’ll think it will benefit your guy. Write, call, tweet whatever @ the Trump campaign . People like me who see Trump as the least bad choice: you should agree with me here. Start putting some squeeze on the Teflon Don. Biden supporters, if there are any here – you should think this would help the big guy. He’d be presidential and above the fray, right? LOL.

  13. @Michael Skaggs,

    It Was in the Wikipedia article on the “1948 United States presidential election”, in the section about the Socialist Party (Norman Thomas) nomination.

    The footnote leads back to a BAN Article from 2008. In a comment Richard Winger says that the Thomas-Dobbs debate was in New York City and covered by the newspapers of the Socialist Party, Progressive Party, Socialist Labor Party, and the Socialist Workers parties. I don’t know what his source of this is. It may have come from Darcy Richardson who wrote a biography of Norman Thomas.

    The 2008 BAN article has a comment linking to an ourcampaigns article about the Stassen-Dewey debate. That in turn has a link to an audio recording of that radio debate. It is quite interesting to list to that debate, if for no reason other than to see stylistic differences from 2024-style debates.

    The ourcampaigns article says that William Z. Foster of the Communist Party asked for equal time after the Stassen-Dewey debate. The Mutual Broadcasting System (MBS) arranged for a debate between Foster and Thomas, but Foster refused to debate Thomas.

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