We’ve Been Here Before

History sometimes rhymes

“On the eve of the Democratic National Convention, his prospects could not have appeared much more grim. It was not just that he faced a strong, heavily financed, supremely confident Republican opponent, or the threat of [an independent candidacy] cutting away at his support among liberals. The whole Democratic Party, the famous, disparate Democratic ‘coalition,’ of labor, intellectuals, city bosses, and Southern segregationist fabricated by Franklin Roosevelt, was coming  to pieces.”

That was President Harry S Truman in the summer of 1948, as  described by David  McCullough in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Truman (Simon and Schuster, 1992.)   McCullough continued: “Harolds Ickes [an FDR advisor], as if to settle old scores with Truman, wrote to tell him:

“You have the choice of retiring voluntarily, and with dignity, or of being driven out of office by a disillusioned and indignant citizenry.”