Contributing Editor MICHAEL LIND on Free Silver regarding presidents

It reminds me of the introductory anecdote from the book Up From Conservatism by Michael Lind. Lind describes the 4-way 1948 Presidential election between Democrat Harry Truman, Republican Thomas Dewey, Progressive Party candidate Henry Wallace, and Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond. He traces each of those candidates’ ideologies into the ’90s (when the book was written). Thurmond, he suggests, is a modern day Republican: Right-wing, conservative, and Southern – which he uses as a code for racist throughout the book. Wallace, he argues, is New Left – the predecessor to George McGovern, Jerry Brown, and (if Lind had waited a decade to write his book) the Markos Moulitsas Left. Thomas Dewey is the DLC: centrist, pro-business, inoffensive to all, and indifferent to labor. But, there’s no modern equivalent to Truman.

Michael on Free Silver