Presidential Election 1944

In 1944 the world was in the middle of a major world war and the United States had an election for President, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, after three terms as president decided to run for an unprecedented fourth term after it was believed that after his 1940 win he would retire in 1945.  He had gotten the United States out of the Republican Great Depression in the 1930s and was now leading the Allies to victory ridding the world of fascism started by Adolf Hitler in Germany.

As for the Republican Party, New York Governor Thomas E. Dewey had won the Wisconsin Republican Primary and was able to defeat his chief opponent, Ohio Governor John Bricker (who would be Governor Dewey's running-mate) at the Republican National Convention.

The Democratic Party realized that FDR was in ill-health, but because of the gentleman's agreement between the press and the president, Roosevelt's health out of the news.  But fear of an imminent expiration of the President, the Democratic Party feared Vice President Henry Wallace becoming president upon Roosevelt's death.

In one of the great political stories of the 20th Century, Wallace was considered the favorite by the delegates at the convention for the Vice Presidential Nomination, but Party bosses found him too liberal and eccentric.  The president had even offered the nomination to his 1940 Republican Challenger, Wendell Willkie the position, but Willkie died before the Election.  So the Party bosses saw a US Senator from Missouri named Harry S Truman.  Truman had not sought the nomination and had expressed no desire to run for Vice President.  Then, while at the Democratic National Convention, President Roosevelt on a phone call said that Truman can go to hell if he is willing to break up the Democratic Party in the middle of a world war, if he is so selfish to put his own interests ahead of his own country then it is all on his head.  Harry Truman was nominated as Franklin Roosevelt's third running-mate.

Besides the war, one of the major issues was what we call in our time; voter suppression.  But the suppression was not against Americans who might vote for one Party over the other, but Republican led states preventing American servicemen from voting while fighting in Europe and the Pacific.  But as one Merchant Marine said, "for every vote Dewey stopped, there were two parents voting for Roosevelt."

In the end, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman won the 1944 Presidential Election 432 Electoral Votes and 52.4 percent of the Popular Vote to Thomas E. Dewey and John Bricker's 99 Electoral Votes and 45.9 percent of the Popular Vote.

After the Election, Roosevelt wanted to get started on a peacetime America where he focused on issues like civil rights.  But time would not permit that.  Within 82 days of being sworn in for a fourth term, President Roosevelt would address Congress and the nation on his meeting at Yalta with Josef Stalin and Winston Churchill only to die on April 12, 1945.

See also:

• Presidential Election 1940
• Presidential Election 1944
• Presidential Election 1948
• Presidential Election 1952
• Presidential Election 1956
• Presidential Election 1960
• Presidential Election 1964
• Presidential Election 1968
• Presidential Election 1972
• Presidential Election 1976
• Presidential Election 1980
• Presidential Election 1984
• Presidential Election 1988
• Presidential Election 1992
• Presidential Election 1996
• Presidential Election 2000
• Presidential Election 2004
• Presidential Election 2008
• Presidential Election 2012
• Presidential Election 2016
• Presidential Election 2020