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Authors join peers, scholars, and friends in conversation. Topics include environment, humanities, race, social justice, cultural studies, art, literature and literary criticism, media studies, sociology, anthropology, grief and loss, mental health, and more.
What he was really driven by was to put together a solid two party system that would preserve the thing he really cared about, which was the New Deal state.
David Baum:He was someone who was in it for the best of reasons. There is no Hubert Humphrey around right now.
Jennifer A. Delton:Hi there. I'm Jennifer Delton. I have a new book out. It's called Making Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. It's not entirely new, it's actually a reissue of a book I published in 2002, and I'm here to talk about that book with my good friend David Baum, who is also a former colleague.
Jennifer A. Delton:He is a historian of Medieval Europe, but he is joining me because we have had an ongoing conversation about America in the 1960s, American liberalism, and Hubert H. Humphrey. And that conversation, I think, started the first day we met when you interviewed me for my job at Skidmore College. So that's when we first started talking about Hubert Humphrey. I thought I'd just let him start by talking about what Humphrey has meant to him and America, and then I'll throw it over to David to ask questions about the book.
David Baum:Thanks, Jennifer. Yeah, we started this conversation about thirty years ago, and some version or another of it, it continues today. You know, I'm not a scholar of Humphrey, but I grew up at a particular moment when Humphrey's prominence in American political history is probably at its peak. It came of political age, as it were, in 1968, which was a year for so many important things to have happened. Hubert Humphrey was, I believe, our best vice president.
David Baum:You know I've included Humphrey in my own Mount Rushmore of figures from that era, four of whom are presidents, and then there's Hubert Humphrey. And they're all clustered. They were all born around the same time. The oldest is Johnson and the youngest was Kennedy. There's Humphrey in between.
David Baum:And Humphrey was a brilliant senator. I think he was an excellent vice president. He was someone who we don't have one of anymore. There is no Hubert Humphrey around right now. And people lament generically.
David Baum:So why don't we have politicians like this or like that? The guy they're talking about without putting a name on it is Hubert Humphrey, someone who was committed to public service for the purpose of public service, as corny as it sounds to say that. But it's not that he didn't have ambition, he did. He wanted to be president and he failed to achieve that. But he was someone who was in it for the best of reasons.
David Baum:And today it's either our cynicism or the people we actually conjure up to run for office where we're not convinced of their sincerity at all. And it doesn't mean they have to be perfect people, but what Humphrey was was somebody who had a sense of what he wanted to do, a specific issue that was going to be his primary issue that he thought he could build a larger politics that's when I pick him up because he's a choice. In 1968, among all the Democratic candidates, there are specific choices that a young person getting into politics, or if you're a veteran voter, the Democratic Party offered you two very stark choices. And one of them was the Hubert Humphrey choice. There were really only two issues.
David Baum:There were other issues, but they didn't matter. They were local issues, or they were issues that ten years from then would be issues. But for us at the time, there was the war and there was civil rights. And the Democratic Party, after Johnson withdraws, and after Bobby Kennedy is shot, Bobby Kennedy is the only guy that pulls both parts of the Democratic Party together. He's anti war and anti racism, or perceived as such.
David Baum:But you have a choice between Eugene McCarthy, who's anti war, and you have Hubert Humphrey, whose prominent thing is that he is anti discrimination, anti racism, he's the civil rights guy, so choose. The Democratic Party chose Humphrey for a variety of reasons. I alone in my friend group, because imagine we're all young guys, I alone chose Humphrey. All my friends chose the anti war candidate, Gene McCarthy, for reasons that were both philosophical and self serving. None of us wanted to go to Vietnam.
David Baum:But my sensibilities had run towards the civil rights issue since we got taught it in school, and we watched it unfold in real time. And like any fanboy in 1968, I researched my guy. I read in the paper I, who's Hubert Humphrey? And I see him on TV and so forth. And I came to discover the things that are in your book.
David Baum:You hadn't written it yet, but Humphrey was probably the most prominent civil rights crusader, certainly white civil rights crusader in the country. And that it was because of Humphrey that the Democratic Party pivoted 180 degrees and became the party of civil rights. And that was an important issue to me. It was a domestic issue that had a long history. The war at that time in 1968 was still problematic.
David Baum:Most of the country was still supporting the war. My family was split on this. My mom might as well have been a Quaker. She was against all wars and most household arguments. My dad was a Nixon guy, but it was clear to me that Humphrey was the democratic politician who spoke most clearly to what I thought as a young man figuring this stuff out was the long term issue in America.
David Baum:You know this from our conversations that we both believe that this is the crystal clear issue, no matter how old I get, no matter how old you get, and how much we know. That insight that I had in the summer of nineteen sixty eight, when I decided that I was going go to a Humphrey rally, that's it. That's the issue. So that's why when you came into my office in 1997 looking for a job, we had a good conversation because you had this Hubert Humphrey book or dissertation, and I had some thoughts. Now here's the sad part.
David Baum:So Humphrey, I believe does not get his due for a variety of reasons. He didn't get to be president, but he also doesn't get his due. He became a bit of a punchline during his vice presidency. Johnson mistreated him. Johnson took credit for the things that Humphrey did, which is his right as the president, but he also kept Humphrey a bit on puppet strings during the campaign, probably cost Humphrey the election.
David Baum:Humphrey bounces back from that loss, becomes a prominent member of the Senate, and I would argue becomes the public face. He becomes the standard bearer of the old guard of the Democratic Party for nearly ten years until his death in 1977. So he is what people call Teddy Kennedy, a lion of the Senate. And so his moment comes in 1980 to be remembered. I remember watching this on TV, you probably know the reference that I'm going to make, but Jimmy Carter has just accepted the renomination as the Democratic candidate for president, and he wants to remember those who've gone before, the Democrats who contributed to the party's success and its moral sensibilities.
David Baum:And he remembers Humphrey who has just died in 1977. And in acknowledging him, he calls him Hubert Horatio horn blower. It's a devastating moment. It is embarrassing on a national level. Of course, Carter is mortified.
David Baum:I'm sitting at home thinking, What is going on? And I believe that it's a day the music died moment, because in that moment when Hubert Humphrey should have been treated with the greatest respect by his own party for everything he had done over the course of forty years, they get his name wrong. And that seems to me so apt, especially when we compare it to his own epigraph that he wanted, epithet that he wanted to have for himself, which is so beautiful and so on point that I want to just stop right here. I want to pivot to you and say, can you share that with us? And can you tell us what that means to you in thinking about the book you've put together?
Jennifer A. Delton:Okay. Well, there's so much to address. First of all, I had completely forgotten that Carter did that. And it's so apt that as you say, know his legacy seems to have been passed by a little bit but Carter did choose Walter Mondale as his vice president and that is totally a tribute to Hubert Humphrey. Walter Mondale figures large in the book Making Minnesota Liberal because, I look at the whole group of Minnesotans around Hubert Humphrey when he was mayor and when he was a political science professor, Mondale was Humphrey's student in the classroom in political science, and then also as well as a politician.
Jennifer A. Delton:And Mondale, of course, also went on to be a vice president Jimmy Carter's vice president. The way Humphrey wanted to be remembered the specific thing is he said he was asked at the end can't get my book right now I'm just gonna have to remember this you know, what do you want to be remembered for?' and he said, 'I want to be remembered as an effective part of government.' He wanted to be remembered for his government service and this is at a time in 1980 when Ronald Reagan has maligned all of government and sees government as the problem and here Hubert Humphrey has dedicated his whole life to being an effective man in government. I want them to say that I did my job and that is what he says, and that still moves me when he said that because it's such a non egotistical thing to say, not about the person, but about the system. And Humphrey was an institutionalist, And I think right now as Liberals try to figure out like, what are we gonna do? It might not be the activists that we need, but the institutionalists.
Jennifer A. Delton:And I think, I mean it's funny to hear you describe Humphrey as a civil rights activist because most people would say, I'm not so sure, you know, because part of how he got civil rights through was making a lot of compromises, and that is what was required by politics, by the government, by using government as a way to reform society, you had to make a lot of compromises. So he was in his early years when I talk about him in the 1940s, so the book that we're talking about right now focuses on Humphrey's very early years in the 1940s as mayor of Minneapolis, and when he was running for his first Senate term in 1948. And then he really was a kind of a firebrand and a real activist. But the more he became an effective member of government, the less firebrand y he became, and that is of course one of the reasons that answers your other question too is what happened to his legacy. He made a lot of compromises that his fellow civil rights activists were appalled at.
Jennifer A. Delton:And most famously, for people who may or may not know, in 1964, when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which had just fought back lynchings and violence against them to claim a seat in the Democratic National Convention of nineteen sixty four, Humphrey is the one that says, you know, we're not gonna be able to do that for you, but don't worry because we'll do it in four years. Four years, you're guaranteed the seat, but in 1964, he had to say, no, we can't do this for you, and at that point that's John Lewis, that's Fannie Lou Hamer, that's Martin Luther King Junior, and at that point people are saying, what happened to Humphrey? You know he gave that beautiful speech in 1948 where he asked the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights and then in 1964 he's saying no to the black activists who have risked their lives to get a seat at the convention. That helps explain what happened to Humphrey's reputation, but one of the points I make in my book, you know, yes, civil rights was a part of him, but what he was really driven by was to put together a party system, a solid two party system that would preserve the thing he really cared about which was the New Deal State, which was a social welfare system that helped everyone.
Jennifer A. Delton:It helped black people but it helped whites, it helped the labor unions, it helped anyone who cared about human rights in general and progress in particular, so that was what he really cared about, and I think in that moment in 1964 when he is you know, seeding the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, he's thinking about how to make the Democratic Party stronger and frankly how to make the civil rights legislation stronger as well. Like here's what you have to do. You're going to have to make some compromises, but as Humphrey believed, the arc of history is long and it bends towards justice, so you just have to wait a little bit. That's not what activists like to hear.
David Baum:Agreed. The rest of Humphrey's career, which is built around those moments that are central to your book, should have indicated to folks that this guy is a tent builder. He's a guy who's building a tent and he's trying to bring people in. He's not working on the premises of the purity of the activists who are in fact not in power. Those are the purest.
David Baum:And we understand that. In his early years, and you're the one who brought this to my attention, this is not what was being foregrounded in 1968 and so forth when people talked about Humphrey building coalitions and so on. But he was a deft politician. He wasn't just a guy who was enthusiastic about it. You brought up this point that he's a political scientist bringing a political scientist's perspective.
David Baum:So he's a deft coalition builder. He's not happenstance. He's got a plan and there are stages and steps that he wants to follow. Could you describe to us Hubert Humphrey, the political scientistpolitical theorist, perhaps?
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, excellent question. The thing you have to know about Minnesota, and that's why this local perspective is so important, is that it had a very strong third party tradition. And what Humphrey really cares about, and what political scientists really care about, is this new thing called the New Deal, which in the 1940s is still pretty new, and liberals want it to last after the Great Depression and World War II. So you could argue, I mean the New Deal was a revolution. America was founded on principles of limited government, and here you've got New Deal expanding the government like nobody's ever seen before, and then World War II comes along and does the same thing.
Jennifer A. Delton:Now, from a political science perspective, the political scientists of Humphrey's ilk and the people who tutored him and mentored him, they see this as just common sense way for modern democracies to work, that you have a government that can organize and take care of people's interests and deliver a social service state and make sure that people have jobs and if they're laid off they can have unemployment insurance, that when they're old and they retire that there's some social security for them, that families with dependent children should have some money, disabled people, the blind, all of this. A full social service welfare state. Because that was brought about because of the crisis of the Great Depression and the crisis of the war, Liberals are wondering, well how do we get this to stick in the American psyche, in American culture? How do we get people to accept this as common sense and as normal?' So they're really trying to normalize the idea of a large social welfare state that does not, like the conservatives are saying, Oh that'll inhibit our freedom, and what Humphrey is saying, No, it's going to expand our freedom. It's going to secure more rights.
Jennifer A. Delton:It's going to make sure that people have an income. It's going to... Yeah, the government's maintenance of the economy is going to even out the chaos of capitalism and make sure that there's job security for all, and isn't that the basis of freedom? If you don't have the money to take care of yourself and your family, you've got nothing. So you don't have freedom.
Jennifer A. Delton:So the liberals were making this argument over and over, and Humphrey really wants to get on board with that and the Democratic party that's gotta be the vehicle for it, but in Minnesota, the Democratic party is nothing! The Farmer Labor Party, which was very successful, was a third party in Minnesota in the nineteen thirty's, and that party supported that whole social welfare idea. In fact, Roosevelt got some of his ideas, from the Farmer Labor Party in Minnesota, but no one else is gonna vote for the Farmer Labor Party, it's only in Minnesota. And so Humphrey has to figure out a way, It's not just Humphrey, I'm using him, but I do want to emphasize there's a lot of people involved in this effort, that Minnesotans might know like Walter Bondale and, you'll see if you read the book. Whole thing they have to do is give Minnesota a viable party.
Jennifer A. Delton:The Democratic Party of Minnesota is really just the only people in that. They're Irish and German Catholics, and one thing is they're drinkers, and historically, the Republicans in Minnesota, the Lutherans, the Scandinavians who were in power, they tended to not like the drinking, and so there were a lot of other issues, a lot of other cultural issues, that kept Minnesota's Democratic Party just the party of Catholics, basically, and from a Protestant perspective, they were nothing, and they were in the minority. The Catholics were in the minority. That's why you have the Farmer Labor Party because those people who wanted to offer an alternative to the Republican power mongers, you had to form a new party because the Democratic Party was worthless in that regard. Humphrey and his buddies, and even at this point, people in the Democratic Party and people in the labor unions, they're for this merger.
Jennifer A. Delton:They realize that this party system is not doing them any favors, and so there's a lot of support. It's not just Humphrey and the political scientists who want a merger. There's definitely a lot of support for the merger, the Farmer Labor Party, and the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, but Humphrey and the political scientists really articulate to the people of Minnesota that you're not losing anything here because the Farmer Labor Party was this very pioneering. It seemed very progressive. It was calling for something like Social Security before Roosevelt even had Social Security.
Jennifer A. Delton:It wanted to protect the rights of labor and farmers, all from the monopolists that were the grain dealers in Minnesota. And so they had a real progressive, real activist, real movement oriented perspective that gave them their energy. And if they hook up with the Democrats, they're... You know, what? Are they gonna become the party of the Democrats?
Jennifer A. Delton:I mean, alright. There's the new deal, but it's also strapped and tied to the southern conservatives, the white supremacists, the Dixiecrats. It's also in Minnesota. If you're gonna do that in Minnesota, it's tied to these Catholics, and so that's a problem. I think what Humphrey and his coalition that he puts together, a large part of it is telling Minnesotans that this will make the party of progress even more strong.
Jennifer A. Delton:It'll make it stronger if the Democrats and the Farmer Labor Party can get together. We'll have greater protection for labor unions, we'll have greater protection for farmers, we'll have greater protection for the New Deal state if this merger goes through, and so that is their impetus behind this. Obviously there was a great deal of support for it because it happened in 1944, and the Democratic Party went along with it. There was a part of the Farmer Labor Party, and I'll just say this, that was dominated by the communists that did not go along with it, and so that kind of sets up for an anti communist battle later on in the nineteen forty eight election. But just in answer to your question like what was Humphrey doing to try to get the New Deal state on track?
Jennifer A. Delton:He was taking those ideas about a two party system that he learned. I won't go into those you can read about them in the book. What they essentially say is that the two party system organizes interest groups and interest groups are the fairest, most democratic way to make sure everyone's interests are represented. They called it pluralism. They say to the communist and the activist, You know, you don't have to have...
Jennifer A. Delton:That's not the way to build a government that's going to take care of everyone's needs fairly and democratically. You have to have this system of interest groups that can compete against each other, and that are organized by a party one party or the other. They'll get organized. So they advocated this two party system and tried to make it seem like it was the best way to actually get the progress and to hold on to the New Deal state after World War II.
David Baum:One of the things that impresses me about this effort, especially since it leads to the fracturing of the Democratic Party in 1948, it is risky that there's a roll of the dice that's involved here. And in a way, Humphrey has to, or Humphrey and his associates have to turn the sort of the oppositional gaze of the Minnesota Democratic Party, the Democratic Farmer Labor Party now, away from the traditional enemies of the Farmer Labor Party, which would be the Eastern establishment. And they've got to pivot now, now the South has to become the straw man, maybe more than a straw man. And that, to me, that's a bold move.
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, actually, that is a really good point. The Farmer Labor Party and the populist of Minnesota, they were all, we hate the East Coast bankers, they're the ones that are responsible for holding us back, and that's a very class based argument to make. By switching and seeing the enemy as the state's right South, that provides the same type of enemy, but actually then allows the Democratic Party to not alienate the East Coast bankers and such, who are after all also funders of even the New Deal Democratic Party. So it is a real significant pivot. It is the way that Humphrey is able to bring some of that activist energy, that kind of pushing against the power structure, and saying we are moving to progress by challenging the Dixiecrats, because no one's done it.
Jennifer A. Delton:Franklin Roosevelt got the New Deal through by promising the white South that most of the programs are not going to interfere with your special arrangement that you have, which is called Jim Crow segregation. The way that Roosevelt, Franklin Roosevelt, is able to get the White South to vote for, and the White South wants the stuff the New Deal offers. It offers dams, it offers subsidies for cotton crops. It offers free trade. There's a lot that the South wants from the New Deal, but they don't want its programs, especially social security and other programs to interfere with segregation.
Jennifer A. Delton:And so they stop any attempt by black activists, and there really is a revive, there's a huge civil rights movement during World War because as you know, Black Americans fought and sacrificed their lives fighting against fascism, and it inspired many to come home and say, Well, we're gonna defeat the fascism abroad, but we're gonna come home and defeat the fascists at home. And those would have been the white, the Dixiecrats in the white South. So there is a civil rights movement happening, and the South is putting it down in really the most extreme and reactionary way with the lynchings of Black American service members that are coming back. I mean, it's not just Humphrey wanting to pivot for political reasons away from the East Coast, But also, there's some real horrible stuff going down in the South that becomes associated then with the Democratic Party, and seems to hold the Democratic Party back from doing anything to prevent those lynchings. Poor Isaac, a Black soldier who came home wearing his uniform and was attacked and blinded.
Jennifer A. Delton:I mean, just so many horrific crimes against Black soldiers returning to the South and trying to claim some dignity. And so there's calls for an anti lynching laws, but they don't get anywhere because they get filibustered in the Senate by the Dixiecrats. So there really is an urgent moral need, not just a political need, but also a moral need to like stand up to the Dixiecrats. And it's gotta be the Democrats that do this. And it goes along so well with preserving the New Deal state, because the whole thing about states' rights is, Oh, there's too much government interference.
Jennifer A. Delton:And so you'll have a lot of conservatives who will say, Well, I'm all for civil rights. What I don't want is the federal government telling me who I can hire and who I can't hire. That argument. So when you attack states' rights, you're also freeing up and normalizing the federal New Deal social welfare state, and normalizing that idea. And so that is indeed what Humphrey is doing, is going on there.
Jennifer A. Delton:So it's a real important issue. And I stress throughout, I am trying to make the argument that there are real political gains for Hubert Humphrey personally, and the Democratic Party, but that doesn't mean that Humphrey is not 100% sincere in his belief that discrimination and the violence against Black people has got to come to a stop, and that the federal government has to do something about this. It absolutely has to. We're fighting. We're going into a Cold War with the Soviet Union, and that is the one thing that the Soviet Union reminds the people of the world.
Jennifer A. Delton:America claims to stand for freedom and democracy, but look how they treat this minority population in their own land. And that, again, there's a political reason, but most Americans are appalled by what's happening in the South right at this point.
David Baum:Yeah. And that's a good point because I think it might help to answer the why Minnesota question. I can understand politicians in the South, white progressives or black activists in the South, or in states with large cities with large black populations, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, being on board with this emerging constellation of ideas with civil rights and diminution of states' rights at the center. Why Minnesota with a minuscule black population? Is it the moral issue?
David Baum:Is it something else? Could you unravel that for us, the why Minnesota question?
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, that is a major part of... That was the question that I began the book with in the first place, that Hubert Humphrey, where did he come from? From Minnesota, why was he so interested in civil rights in the 1940s? There was no black vote, which was why a lot of politicians were interested in civil rights. A lot of Minnesotans, back when I was writing the book, would say that, Well, you know, there is something morally superior about us Minnesotans.
Jennifer A. Delton:So, you know, that was certainly an explanation that was around. But, in many ways, I think that the small black population allowed Humphrey to do what he did. It posed less of a threat. So if white people are concerned about how black civil rights might affect them, Will I now be in competition? Are they gonna get rights I don't have?
Jennifer A. Delton:That wasn't as large of a problem in Minnesota precisely because there was a small black population. And so Humphrey was able to work with black activists. And what was the population? 9,000, 10,000, black people in Minnesota around this time. Very small, but many activists.
Jennifer A. Delton:You know, newspaper editors, labor unionists, it was pretty active, and so part of the book is about the black community and the activists that were indeed fighting for civil rights. The civil rights comes attached to an anti racism and just a view... The view is that you know look, we're all human beings regardless of the color of our skin or our cultural background or whatever we've been through, we're all human beings and if we're ever going to be able to succeed as a society, we all have to learn to live together and respect each other. That's the American way. This was the kind of anti racism that exhibited then and it taught people that you have to let go of your old prejudices.
Jennifer A. Delton:You've inherited those but really let's re examine them. Are they helpful? Are they worth holding on to? That's kind of a lot of the anti racist education. What it also did was that kind of, and this is an argument I make in my book, or just a thought, I mean, hard to prove something like this, but I do suggest that once you start talking about letting go of old prejudices, then maybe the Lutherans can stop being prejudiced against the Catholics, maybe the non drinkers can stop being prejudiced against the drinkers, Maybe the Norwegians can get along with the Germans.
Jennifer A. Delton:You know, there's all kinds of divisions in Minnesota society, in the 1940s, that are based on long time prejudices. You know, maybe it's good for everyone. And actually, even, you know, Humphrey was very attuned and interested in cooperating with the city's elites, and that language is like, Yeah, let go of some of these prejudices against bankers and flour magnets. You know, there's this whole can't we all get along? Think of what we could achieve if we were able to break through these barriers that are holding us back.
David Baum:So today we use that word inclusion maybe as an updated term for consensus was what was applied at the time. The ideal, the political ideal from the 30s forward seems to be to find those common elements that people can rally around and make the tent as big as possible. Dissensus, that idea of dissent, then gets a bit marginalized, which is possibly why just in his own thoughts, Humphrey may have been severe with the communists. His anti communism may have had a foreign diplomatic element to it. But it is also the communists were purists.
David Baum:They weren't looking to build a big tent, they were looking to achieve power. And those could be different things. So that idea of consent or consensus as an ideal, it runs a course that kind of runs Humphrey's whole life. And then it kind of stops, right? It stops with this Carl Schmitt idea that we really have two different camps.
David Baum:And what politics is about is one of those camps wins. Does consensus seem like an ideology when Humphrey is speaking about it, or is a political tool that he can use? How do you see that ideal of consensus working with a guy like Humphrey, who seems to me to have spent a lifetime working with this idea, even as it becomes less and less popular?
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, well, I don't think Humphrey survives to see the revival of Carl Schmitt, thank goodness. But he's definitely interested in consensus, and his main aim is his belief, more than anything, that the federal government has a role in making people's lives better. And that if we work towards that, that we'll be able to bring a lot of people together, and also that is the appropriate role of the government. And so that is an ideology. The anti communism is an issue that kind of brings that consensus around.
Jennifer A. Delton:She's an anti communist not just theoretically, but the communists are the ones that are putting the wrench in the whole plan to have a New Deal Democratic Party. And so it's a real visceral political. It's like, Oh my God, what is wrong with these people? They took over the DFL party, and in 1948, when Henry Wallace, who was Franklin Roosevelt's Vice President, what we would call today a real lefty, real progressive, he ran a Progressive Party campaign. He was so upset that Truman was being belligerent to the Soviet Union in a way that Wallace felt like that's not necessary, and Truman is rattling his saber.
Jennifer A. Delton:And we don't believe in war, and we don't believe the Soviet Union wants war, so why is The United States heading in the direction of belligerence with the Soviet Union? Wallace does not like the military budget increasing. He doesn't like that Truman's put in place a military draft in what should be a peacetime. So Wallace has a thorough critique of any kind of anti communist foreign policy, and he believes in it so strongly that he runs in a third party called the Progressive Party. And the Progressive Party also embraces civil rights.
Jennifer A. Delton:In fact, to a greater, much greater degree than the Democrats do. Wallace will go down south and give a civil rights speech in Charleston, South Carolina, and people will just pelt him with tomatoes and throwing stuff at him and chasing him out of town, threatening violence. But Wallace did that, you know, I mean, that phrase, Put your body on the line. So Wallace was like much more of a civil rights activist than Humphrey ever was in that regard. And so the Progressive Party stands for civil rights, and it's opposed to the Cold War.
Jennifer A. Delton:And the communists, because the communists are indeed following, at least the communists in the CPUSA, which are the communists that have taken over the Democratic Farmer Labor Party, and that's an exciting story that you can read about in this book. They take over that party, and they're behind Wallace, and they threaten, what they're going to do, is to have the DFL party run Wallace as their main candidate, making Harry Truman, the Democrat, have to run on a third party ticket in Minnesota. And so that just puts the kibosh on everything. So Humphrey does, and his group, the political scientists, and that would be Art Nastalin, and Walter Mondale, and Orville Freeman. These guys, they launch a really serious anti communist campaign, kind of along the lines of, I'm not calling them Schmidians, but they have to destroy the communists in Minnesota, or they're not gonna get ahead here.
Jennifer A. Delton:And so they do. And that's kind of quelling that dissent. And nationally, Wallace gets quelled with the anti communism. Truman calls him a commie. And that progressive party ends up disappearing.
Jennifer A. Delton:And then you have that consensus. Then you have the consensus between the Republican Party and the Democratic Party that yes, we will be fighting the Soviet Union. But also yes, we're going to start to try to make progress towards civil rights. Both of those are two different consensuses. Because then the Dixiecrats also get marginalized.
Jennifer A. Delton:Once Humphrey, this is again, to your question of marginalizing dissent and how consensus works, Humphrey gives his great speech to step into the bright sunshine of human rights. And that whole speech, the whole purpose, is to get the Democratic Party to embrace a civil rights platform that says, We stand for legislation that will prohibit the discrimination on the basis of race in hiring and firing, and in employment. That's called the FEPC. And that platform, the Democrats need to embrace. And that's what Humphrey is trying to do when he's making that speech, is like, we've got to step into the sunshine of human rights and not be won over by these arguments about states' rights.
Jennifer A. Delton:And when he says that bright sunshine of human rights, the crowd goes crazy and everyone's, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then it passes, and the crowd goes crazy again. And then the contingents from Alabama and Mississippi and South Carolina, they stand up in a huff. They walk out of the convention hall and everyone's, Yeah, get out of here. We don't want you anyway.
Jennifer A. Delton:And then, Tram Thurman, the senator from South Carolina, will run as also running for president in 1948 on the state's rights platform. So the Democratic Party in 1948 is divided. You've got Henry Wallace, the progressive candidate, that's the progressive wing of the Democratic Party, and then you have Strom Thurman with the Dixiecrat wing of the Democratic party, and then you've got Truman as the, you know, as the Democratic party. So that election is split three ways. Truman never should have won that election, but he did, and I argue, I think it was because of Hubert Humphrey.
David Baum:Well, there you go. All right. I think so as well. I think there was a separating of wheat from chaff that happened in 1948, similar to what happened to the Republican Party in 1912, right? That it took a certain kind of step back in order to move forward, to kind of separate out the different groups and see what you have and see what the core elements are.
David Baum:What's your base philosophy and what are your core groups? And what was left of the Democratic Party was still sufficient around which to build a winning coalition. It took a few years. I think one of the other victories in this, as you alluded to, is something that's not always seen as a victory today. And that was the ability with these other elements isolated, the ability of the Democrats, as sort of philosophically reconstructed by Humphrey now and represented by Truman, they're able to do business with a large contingent of Republicans.
David Baum:And so you end up that consensus idea is now, that's the big postwar liberal consensus where Democrats and Republicans can disagree on certain elements of legislation or whatever, but still put together a program of governance that almost doesn't depend on who's in the White House or who controls Congress. It does for the flavoring, but the entree remains the same. So maybe you could speak to Humphrey and his ideas on that, or his contribution. I see him as the last standard bearer of that idea, that working across the aisle, that that's a practice that borders, again, almost like on a religious ritual for guys like Humphrey, Humphrey and his We're seeing the last of them are now gone. Maybe you can kind of talk about that a little bit, because I think it's a genius to be able to do that myself.
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, I agree that liberal consensus. And a lot of historians have raised objections that there wasn't as much consensus as you think, but I actually think that from where we are right now, it looks like there was quite a bit of consensus comparatively, and the government was, I mean, those years, those post World War II years, with that consensus, it was amazing what The United States did. Obviously it defeated fascism, passing the Civil Rights Act ends Jim Crow segregation, puts a man on the moon, it ends up defeating communism. I mean, that is a preponderance of power that allowed The United States to work together to achieve great things. That is what Humphrey wanted.
Jennifer A. Delton:And the whole theory, everything they're talking about in political science with liberal pluralism and interest group pluralism and all the different theories of the time were designed to create that consensus. And I also think that the Cold War created that consensus. So it sounds very noble, but it really depended on the Cold War, and as such, it depended on a national security state, and it depended on 58,000 Americans losing their life in Vietnam, and 53,000 Americans losing their life in the Korean War. You can't separate the progressive elements from the national security elements of it. The whole consensus was, We are uniting right now.
Jennifer A. Delton:And for many Republicans, it was, We're gonna hold our noses and cooperate with the civil rights stuff because we know that that'll help us win the Cold War. So that consensus is really built on the Cold War. And when the Cold War ends in the 1990s, that's when you start to see everything unraveling, which is good, because there's room for a lot more voices, voices liberals think are crazy. But nonetheless, it opens it up. It opens things up again.
David Baum:Yeah, I think the '60s already seized the beginning of the unraveling of this. And Humphrey again at the center of this, with his candidacy in 'sixty eight, it's very interesting. Humphrey against Nixon, if it's just Humphrey Nixon and there's nothing else going on, that is such a snooze of an election. I mean, let's face it, these are not charismatic men. One is most famous for, let me say this about that.
David Baum:And the other one is, what is it? I'm pleased as punch. Right? Was Humphrey's. And I actually, this is my little anecdote.
David Baum:So, I saw Humphrey twice, one of the times I met him. And when I met him in 1973 on the steps of the Capitol as an 18 year old man, He told me that he was pleased as punch to meet me. And that it was like John Lennon shook my hand. It was a great moment because he said the words. He said that he was pleased as punch to meet me.
David Baum:But what is interesting, if you go back, is that all the personalities, all the people that had the rallies where people were going nuts for them and so forth, it's Gene McCarthy with the college students. It's George Wallace with hard hats and Southern racists. It's in fact, the people that got thrown out of the convention in 1948. They're back in 1968, messing up Humphrey. It's like that sequel to some weird political science movie.
David Baum:They're back making sure this guy isn't going to become president. It's like this time Dewey wins. There's not a question, this is sort of an observation. I think never in the history of America till we get to the Trumpian years has there been an election where it's so clear the long guy won as 1968.
Jennifer A. Delton:Well, I think a lot of people could argue against that, David.
David Baum:Oh, we'll argue over the phone with wine. That'll make it clearer. So you don't think your man, Hubert Humphrey, all of the genius that you point out and all of his practical political skills, would have made a good president? What do you think? You know him from the beginning.
David Baum:Was he destined to be president and just didn't get it, or should he have never been president?
Jennifer A. Delton:That, I'm not going to I will say, I remember people, liberals, other liberals and part of the liberal establishment didn't think he had what it took. I remember I worked for William P. Bundy, who was the Under Secretary of State our Eastern Affairs during the Johnson administration, and definitely part of the foreign policy elite. Loved Humphrey, respected him for being a decent man, but said he never had what it took to be president. Also, Nixon became president and he did a lot of good, actually.
Jennifer A. Delton:I mean, we always forget. He's the EPA guy. He's the affirmative action guy.
David Baum:Well, those are all good Humphrey ideas. Let's remember, those are not Nixonian ideas. I'm pretty sure Humphrey would have promoted an EPA.
Jennifer A. Delton:Well, he certainly voted for it. So I'll let the readers of the book talk, you know, think about Humphrey, make up their own minds about Humphrey. Because, yeah, I mean, I think you're very pro Humphrey, but as you know, many people on the left, especially during the Vietnam War, saw him as the devil.
David Baum:They did because of his attachment, obviously, to Johnson. And of course, his strong anti communism did not necessarily suggest that he would be opposed to an anti communist war. But I think by 1968, the Vietnam War had lost its luster, I guess. And it seems like Humphrey was straining to be able to come out with a softer message on the war than his loyalty to Johnson allowed him to do. Or as you pointed out, his fear of Johnson undermining his candidacy.
David Baum:He was after all still president and had all the authority to do it.
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, we could argue that. I have always argued that Humphrey was committed to the Cold War. He was a committed anti communist. I'm not sure he would have opened up trade with China, for instance. But anyway-
David Baum:We'll never know. We'll never
Jennifer A. Delton:know. The
David Baum:path not taken. Your book is a book everybody should read. It's Humphrey, the origin story, at least of him politically. There are other books that are out right now on Humphrey, different aspects of him. Why now do you think, given what you know and have thought about Humphrey for all these years, what's going on with revisiting Humphrey right now?
David Baum:Why is it the moment?
Jennifer A. Delton:You know, he was a decent man. He was a guy who could reach across the aisle. He represents a type of politics that people right now, you know, it's a battlefield out there. Anything you say will be held against you. Politics right now is a brutal blood sport, and not even politics anymore.
Jennifer A. Delton:Now, it's, so far from what people in the twentieth century remember politics looking like. And I think there is a nostalgic, Wow, remember when we did this? So Humphrey's reputation has been rehabilitated because of this. He just seemed like a decent guy. He was a sincere guy.
Jennifer A. Delton:And I think, you know, whether some of the new biographies really emphasize his civil rights background. But I think the most important reason we mourn him is he was an institutionalist. And by the way, the book is actually not about Humphrey per se. It is about Minnesota, and more importantly, about these types of institutional thinking. And I think when we talk, sometimes we talk about the neoliberal era with its emphasis on individualism and rugged individualism, here is an articulation of politics which is more about how can we work together?
Jennifer A. Delton:Working together, you you might have to make some compromises, and that kind of works against the idea of this rugged individualism, which I think in the era of neoliberalism comes out, you know, in the kind of emphasis on activism and this purity activism. So there is definitely a good deal of nostalgia for Humphrey, but I also think for younger readers who aren't familiar with this, and for whom it might not sound like a great idea, I think it will help younger readers to have an understanding of history and of twentieth century liberalism, and what it promised, what it was able to deliver, and some of the motives that people trying to build the New Deal State had, and how they connected it to a type of politics and institutions. Their whole point was to get it rooted in institutions. Institutions right now that the Trump administration is right now dismantling just wholesale.
David Baum:There's a nostalgia for that or a recognition of the importance of institutions as we dismantle them across the board. We watch a Congress that's ineffective. We've been talking about a man who made almost all of his impact as a member of the Congress. As a Senator, he was able, of Humphrey, yeah. Obviously, early career leads to this in 'forty eight.
David Baum:Not only does he give a good speech, but he gets the nomination to be Minnesota Senator in 'forty eight. The idea that there were such men that once upon a time without being president could actually affect policy and did so not in executive branches where you get to say this or that, but in legislative branches where you can suggest. And I think that the neutering of the Congress and the neutering of that kind of discourse is as far from Humphrey as you can get. That's my own sense.
Jennifer A. Delton:Yeah, and I think that's right. And I do want to emphasize that I don't want to reduce it to nostalgia. For younger people who might want to read this book, it presents an alternative way of doing politics. And that didn't just come out of nowhere, but that actually was built, that human beings took it upon themselves to imagine that we could have politics that could deliver better lives for people. How would we do that?
Jennifer A. Delton:How would we do that in a democratic fashion? And that's what the New Deal was. So, I would say, you don't have to be a boomer to like this book. I think it offers a real alternative of the way politics has been. And that's kind of what all history is, is like, wow, there were different ways of doing things than the way we've done them.
David Baum:Sure. One suggestion, send a complimentary copy of your book to the Supreme Court Justice of your choice. Let them read it so that they can maybe review some of their own thoughts on how politics in America ought to work. I think that would a public service of the first order.
Jennifer A. Delton:Thank you, David.
Narrator:This has been a University of Minnesota Press production. The book, Making Minnesota Civil Rights and the Transformation of the Democratic Party by Jennifer A. Delton is available from University of Minnesota Press. Thank you for listening.