The lessons from 75 years ago Democrats ignore at their peril

Democrats suffer when they pull their punches, author of new history of long-forgotten progressive tells Andrew Buncombe

Henry Wallace might have been president, but for Democratic Party officials who thought him too progressive (Getty)

In the summer of July 1944, a man called Henry Wallace got to his feet and spoke to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago with a vision.

“The future,” he said, “belongs to those who go down the line unswervingly for the liberal principles of both political democracy and economic democracy, regardless of race, colour or religion.”

Wallace was vice president to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and he may have been his successor in the Oval Office had FDR had his way. But FDR was weakened, grievously ill, and party bosses who considered Wallace too progressive, too left wing, pressured him instead to accept as his running mate a senator from Missouri called Harry Truman. FDR died nine months later.