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This Day in History
Feb 9
World War II
Daylight saving time instituted, 1942
On this day, Congress pushes ahead standard time for the United States by one hour in each time zone, imposing daylight saving time--called at the time…
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1948 Election
President Harry S. Truman, who had succeeded President Roosevelt after his death in 1945, stood for reelection on the Democratic ticket with Alben Barkley of Kentucky as his running mate.
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1940 Election
In 1940 President Franklin D. Roosevelt won an unprecedented third term by a margin of nearly 5 million.
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1964 Election
The Democrats nominated Lyndon B. Johnson who had succeeded to the presidency upon the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
By the beginning of 1944, in the middle of World War II, it was clear that President Franklin D. Roosevelt planned to run for a fourth term, and this shaped the coming campaign. Democratic party regulars disliked Vice President Henry A. Wallace; eventually they persuaded Roosevelt to replace him with Senator Harry S. Truman of Missouri.
Although Wendell Willkie, the nominee in 1940, was initially the front-runner in the Republican race, the party returned to its traditional base, choosing conservative governor Thomas E. Dewey of New York. Republicans had hoped that Governor Earl Warren of California would accept the vice-presidential nomination, but he declined. The party then turned to John W. Bricker.
The president won reelection with results that were similar to those of 1940: 25,602,504 people voted for Roosevelt and Truman, and 22,006,285 voters gave their support to Dewey. The electoral vote was 432 to 99.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was the issue in 1944: his health--the sixty-two-year-old suffered from heart disease and high blood pressure--his competence as an administrator, and his stand on communism and the shape of the postwar world. At issue also was whether any president should serve four terms. The Democrats and the president were vulnerable on all these points, but the American people once again chose the familiar in a time of crisis: "Don't change horses in midstream" was a familiar slogan in the campaign.
The Reader's Companion to American History. Eric Foner and John A. Garraty, Editors. Copyright © 1991 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.
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