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Give 'em hell, Joe! [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-10-29  

Most Kos readers are probably sick of the Biden disapproval narrative—stories like “Most Democrats Would Prefer Someone other than Biden” and others point to Biden’s 37% approval rating. Nervousness is understandable: the stakes in the next election are nothing less than a referendum between the rule of law and the rule of billionaires, oligarchs, and theocrats.

But take heart! Harry Truman was another former vice-president who followed a charismatic president, undoubtedly the greatest Democratic president, FDR. Obama, similarly, is a hard act to follow. On November 21 1947, (about the same point in the cycle as Biden is now) Harry Truman’s approval rating was only 34%, despite his presidency, which looks more and more competent in retrospect (though his decision to drop the bomb is still rightly contested, as are some of his other major decisions—not surprising given the difficult world he faced). He faced three challengers: NY Governor Thomas Dewey, a relatively progressive Republican, running with California Governor Earl Warren as his running mate; segregationist Dixiecrat Senator Strom Thurmond, and the Progressive Party’s Henry Wallace.

But by May, 1947, as Truman established the Truman Doctrine, which pledged the US to defend the world against Soviet imperialism--a decision that looks better and better with historical perspective, despite the many subsequent missteps in the Cold War his approval was back up to 61%. The result: Truman 303, with 49.6% of the popular vote Dewey 189, with 45.1 Thurman 39, with 2.4%.

Truman ran on the slogan “Give ‘em hell, Harry!” The parallels are not exact, of course. Most of the states that Truman carried, other than California, are likely to go Republican, and the Northeastern states that went for Dewey will go for the Democratic nominee. But the Truman story does show how little approval ratings a year before a presidential predict the election result, and that third party candidacies are not the end of the world. So don’t let your stomach drop every time the polls do.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/story/2023/10/29/2202321/-Give-em-hell-Joe

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