Images from the 1948 presidential campaign...

[WI_DEM]

Harry Truman, Acceptance Speech, Philadelphia, PA, 1948

My duty as President requires that I use every means within my power to get the laws the people need on matters of such importance and urgency.

I am therefore calling this Congress back into session July 26th.

On the 26th day of July, which out in Missouri we call "Turnip Day," I am going to call Congress back and ask them to pass laws to halt rising prices, to meet the housing crisis-- which they are saying they are for in their platform.

At the same time I shall ask them to act upon other vitally needed measures such as aid to education, which they say they are for; a national health program; civil rights legislation, which they say they are for; an increase in the minimum wage, which I doubt very much they are for; extension of social security coverage and increased benefits, which they say they are for; funds for projects needed in our program to provide public power and cheap electricity. By indirection, this 80th Congress has tried to sabotage the power policies the United States has pursued for 14 years. That power lobby is as bad as the real estate lobby, which is sitting on the housing bill.

I shall ask for adequate and decent laws for displaced persons in place of this anti-Semitic, anti-Catholic law which this 80th Congress passed.

Now, my friends, if there is any reality behind that Republican platform, we ought to get some action from a short session of the 80th Congress. They can do this job in 15 days, if they want to do it. They will still have time to go out and run for office.






Harry Truman in Detroit, 1948 (Labor Day)



Talking to the voters on the 'whistle stop campaign tour'





"President" Dewey campaigning



"My isn't it a fine day--and I promise you when I'm your president we will have many more fine days."

The pundits predicted it...

[Rageneau]

1. I think Obama would have conceded to Dewey.

Sort of like the way Gore conceded to Bush.

It doesn't matter who's right.
What matters is who'll fight.

[stevedeshazer]

2. You can lump in John Kerry, too.

:(

[rurallib]

3. from TIME magazine Sept. 27,1948 (whistle stop in Iowa)

"Gluttons of Privilege." "It is terribly dangerous to let any one group get too much power in the Government," he cried. He meant the "Wall St. reactionaries" who were in power in the '20s and whose policies, he said, had ended in the 1929 crash and subsequent disaster for the farmers. {snip}

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,780015,00.html#ixzz1X74xLKAB

"How many times do you have to be hit on the head before you find out what's hitting you?" demanded Mr. Truman, standing on Mrs. Agg's knoll in the middle of prosperous Iowa. "It's about time that the people of America realized what the Republicans have been doing to them . . .

"These Republican gluttons of privilege are cold men. They are cunning men . . . This Republican Congress has already stuck a pitchfork in the farmer's back . . . What they have taken away from you thus far would be only an appetizer for the economic tapeworm of big business . . . The question is: Are you going to let another Republican blight wipe out your prosperity?"

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,780015,00.html#ixzz1X74OZzCF

ETA - Obama could probably just read some of Truman's speeches, they still fit.

[Better Believe It]

4. Obama could give the same speeches but they would just be empty election rhetoric

to be long gone and forgotten the day after re-election.

Obama gave "powerful" speeches when he ran in 2008.