On Jan 8, 2008, at 6:41 PM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> It is. It's also a function of the fact that this is the first
>> election with no incumbent pres or VP running since 1952 - and that
>> was Garner as a favorite son. The last true one of these was in 1928,
>> I think.
>
> Some confusion here. 1952 candidates Eisenhower and Stevenson. Garner
> contested Roosevelt for nomination in 1932, then was VP for two terms.
> So back to 1932 EXCEPT for 1952.
Sorry, I was wrong on this. But Truman was a candidate in 1952.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ United_States_presidential_election,_1952#Democratic_Party_Nomination>
> The expected candidate for the Democratic nomination was incumbent
> President Harry S. Truman. Since the newly passed 22nd Amendment
> did not apply to whoever was president at the time of its passage,
> he was eligible to run again. But Truman entered 1952 with his
> popularity plummeting, according to polls. The bloody and
> indecisive Korean War was dragging into its third year, Senator
> Joseph McCarthy's anti-Communist crusade was stirring public fears
> of an encroaching “Red Menace”, and the disclosure of widespread
> corruption among federal employees (including some high-level
> members of Truman's administration) left Truman at a low political
> ebb.
>
> Truman's main opponent was populist Tennessee Senator Estes
> Kefauver, who had chaired a nationally televised investigation of
> organized crime in 1951 and was known as a crusader against crime
> and corruption. The Gallup poll of February 15 showed Truman's
> weakness: nationally Truman was the choice of only 36% of
> Democrats, compared with 21% for Kefauver. Among independent
> voters, however, Truman had only 18% while Kefauver led with 36%.
> In the New Hampshire primary Kefauver upset Truman, winning 19,800
> votes to Truman's 15,927 and capturing all eight delegates.
> Kefauver graciously said that he did not consider his victory "a
> repudiation of Administration policies, but a desire...for new
> ideas and personalities." Stung by this setback, Truman soon
> announced that he would not seek re-election (however, Truman
> insisted in his memoirs that he had decided not to run for re-
> election well before his defeat by Kefauver).