Watching the Secret History of America series by Oliver Stone — never knew about what happened at the 1944 Democratic Convention. Harry Truman was a lackluster Senator brought into office by Boss Pendergast (who said ‘I wanted to show I could make even an office boy a Senator’). Henry Wallace was FDR’s second Vice President (after Garner). He was overwhelmingly popular with voters. Polls gave him 65% with Byrnes, a racist from South Carolina, at 3%, and Truman at 2%.
But the party bosses had other ideas. Even though FDR wanted Wallace to continue as Vice President, the bosses thought him too unfriendly to capitalism, too friendly to women and minorities, and too much in favor of global liberation (ending imperialism).
The ultimate smoke-filled room tragedy ensued. Various deals among the party players resulted in the nomination of Truman.
He didn’t turn out such a bad President. He was a good man, uncorrupted by his association with the Boss. He had a nice family.
But with Wallace, Hiroshima and Nagasaki probably wouldn’t have happened. The Cold War might have been averted. Imperialism would have ended more peacefully than it did, with possibly better consequences for India and Pakistan and certainly for Africa.
With the election of George W Bush, fraudulently, we got 9/11, the Iraq War, tax cuts. With Al Gore we might have had none of the above, and a start to working on climate change.