Hank and Barry, For Reals




Henry Wallace and Pete Seeger, rockin' it

So, everyone's crowing about Barry's hitherto unheard-of level of fundraising. Some left bloggers (mydd, in particular) have spied out the fact that Obama's money machine is not, like Dean's, entirely reliant on internet donations. Neither, however, is it based on high-dollar corporate giving, as with Hills (and every Republican candidate).

Rather, BAM's money is coming from live events, from those 15,000-20,000 person rallies he's held in Oakland, Atlanta, and other places. This use of the rally atmosphere (music, sun, folks and their kids, face-painting etc.) reminds me of another left-wing presidential candidate. In 1948, Henry Wallace, FDR's VP and a leading light of the anti-Cold War, progressive wing of the Democratic Party, was thrown off the ticket to make way for a good ole Missourian machine man, Harry Truman. Wallace, upset with the 1 million deaths of the two atomic bombs, with pervasive segregation, exploitation, and anti-black violence in the South, and with the growing resurgence of reactionary forces in general (see Taft-Hartley, etc.), decided to run an independent campaign for the presidency.

This is the famous "Dewey defeats Truman" election, and the forecasts were so close for a reason. Truman faced breakaways on the right and left, with Strom Thurmond pledging to fuck over the blacks (except, one imagines, for the ones he was sleeping with), and Hank Wallace inspiring the still-vibrant American left, and few observers expected him to capture the presidency.

Of course, in the end, he did, and hating Henry Wallace became a highly profitable pastime for those on the "reasonable" left, the people like Arthur Schlesinger and Reinhold Niebuhr, who we are now taught to revere. And yet, the left's potential was never truly tested... until now.

In short - BAM is cool, Hank was cooler, and may we all pray that motherfucker wins the nomination.