Contingencies of Choice: Impact on the 2024 Election

Today’s episode explores one of the big counterfactuals of twentieth-century American politics: David talks to historian Benn Steil about how close the ultraliberal Henry Wallace came to being FDR’s running mate in 1944 and successor as president in 1945. How near did Wallace get to making it onto the ticket at the 1944 Democratic National Convention? Who or what stopped him? What would his presidency have meant for the Cold War and the nuclear arms race? Was getting President Truman instead a missed opportunity or a lucky escape?

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Next time: What if… the Vietnam War had ended in 1964?

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