The Fight for the Soul of the Democratic Party

The Enduring Legacy of Henry Wallace's Anti-Fascist, Anti-Racist Politics

John Nichols

• Publisher: Verso
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN:
  9781788737401
• eBook ISBN:
  9781788737418
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Seventy-five years ago, Henry Wallace, then the vice president of the United States, mounted a campaign about the "Danger of American Fascism." As fighting in the European and Japanese theatres drew to a close, Wallace warned that the country might win the war and lose the peace; that the fascist threat the United States. was battling abroad had a terrifying domestic variant, growing rapidly in power: wealthy corporatists and their allies in the media. Wallace predicted that if the New Deal project was not renewed and expanded in the postwar era, American fascists would use fear mongering, xenophobia, and racism to regain economic and political power. He championed a progressive postwar world-an alternative to the rising triumphalist "American Century" notion in which the United States rejected colonialism and imperialism.

Wallace's political vision-as well as his nomination to remain vice president-was sidelined by Democratic big city bosses and southern segregationists. In the decades to come, other progressives would mount similar campaigns: George McGovern and Jesse Jackson most prominently. As John Nichols chronicles in this book, they ultimately failed-a warning to would-be reformers today-but their efforts provide us with insights into the nature of the Democratic Party and strategic lessons for the likes of Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• 1. The Prophetic Politics of Henry Wallace: How FDR’s Vice President Anticipated the Dangerous Times That Have Engulfed America
• 2. Hope in a Time of War: Four Freedoms, One World and the Dream of Overcoming Our Imperialisms
• 3. “You Drew Blood from the Cave Dwellers”: Wrestling with Demagoguery and the Wealthy Men Who Finance Authoritarianism
• 4. The Fight against American Fascism: Henry Wallace and the Consequences of Speaking Truth to Power
• 5. July 20, 1944, 10:55 P.M.: When Democrats Began to Abandon the New Deal
• 6. Into the Wilderness: Birth of the Not-as-Bad-as-the-Republicans Democratic Party
• 7. The Great Unwinding: Hypocrisy and Double Talk on Race, Cold War Compromises and the Degeneration of the Democratic Party
• 8. The Party That Lost Its Way: But for the Vietnam War, the Dream of a New New Deal Might Have Been Renewed
• 9. “I Want Us to Be that Party Again!”: How the Democratic Party Might Recover Its Soul in the Twenty-First Century
• Acknowledgements
• A Note on Sources
• Index