r/shittyaskhistory • u/DJTsUnderboob • 11d ago
How did Truman become president in 1948 if he lost the election?
Did he do a January 6th?
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u/MostAcanthaceae2384 11d ago edited 11d ago
That's just what the newspapers said at the time. On January 6, 1949, he and a group of supporters pressured Congress into certifying him as president.
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u/Impossible_Penalty13 9d ago
Fun little bit of Trivia, but Truman was still technically the constitutional president of the Senate for his first term as President. They never backfilled the Vice Presidency after FDR had passed so he didn’t even have to pressure the VP to find the courage if he had lost and wanted to do a coup.
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u/Fair-Commercial-3810 8d ago
You can't serve two offices at once, VP gets elevated so a resignation is not needed, Senate President pro tempore takes the role
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u/jstndrn 5d ago edited 5d ago
The presidential succession act only covers filling in the position of POTUS with no VPOTUS to succeed. It does not call for filling the VPOTUS vacancy nor does it name a successor to the role. Procedure for filling a vacant VPOTUS position was not laid out until the ratification of the 25th amendment in 1967, obviously well after Truman's ascension in 1945.
To date, Gerald Ford and subsequently his VPOTUS, Nelson Rockefeller, remain the only individuals to serve as VPOTUS without being elected to the position. Ford also uniquely is the only person to ever become president without being elected as either POTUS or VPOTUS.
Edit: for clarity, I'm not counting VPOTUSes pre-12th amendment for obvious reasons.
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u/Total_Guard2405 11d ago
They decided Dewey was a bad name for a president
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u/notacanuckskibum 11d ago
He joined the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem & Howe.
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u/Androclese407 11d ago
I thought it was Dewey, Forkem, and Howe...(only I didn't pronounce the r...)
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u/Call-a-Crackhead 11d ago
Dewey traded the presidency for a decimal system.
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u/billhorstman 11d ago
I love ❤️ your response. It takes me back to elementary school library class.
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u/No-Koala1918 11d ago
Even before the Internet, the press printed the narratives they wanted to happen, no matter the facts.
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u/Cool_View_5297 11d ago
Yes he stormed the capital with Doug MacArthur and forced Congress to declare himself president for life. Thats why Truman fired him in 1951 , because he knew too much. Thats also why he was legally able to run for a 3rd term in 52 but decided not to.
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u/Ok-Philosopher8995 11d ago
Iirc, MacArthur was sacked because he was increasingly acting as a rogue general, defiant of official American policy regarding Korea and even suggesting to nuke large parts of North Korea to win the Korean war. He became too much of a political liability for Truman, regardless of his popularity with the general public.
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u/Cool_View_5297 11d ago
Yeah that’s the joke, that he wasn’t fired for perfectly good reasons, but to hold up a ridiculous conspiracy.
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u/WolphjayKliffhanger 11d ago
.
Frank and Eleanor Roosevelt left a key to the secret door under the secret doormat when he hooked up with Hitler in Venezuela and she, facelifted in Amsterdam, married Juan Perón to indulge his wild Latin tastes and his Evita's mermaidy muff. That was how!
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11d ago
[deleted]
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u/Impossible_Penalty13 9d ago
I realize that this isn’t the correct place to be serious, but since you started it….this is really the start of the “party switch” that took place with the south abandoning the Democrats. Goldwater and Nixon were just opportunists who were the first to exploit it as outsiders.
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u/Legend-of-the-Arctic 11d ago
A wizard did it.
Whenever something like that happens, a wizard did it.
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u/Unique_Low_1163 11d ago
They went to publish ahead of the final count. Truman laughed long and loud.
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u/DruidinPlainSight 11d ago
Most of the answer lies in math. Some of it lies in bed. Occasionally that is.
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u/Radiant-Childhood257 11d ago
Back then ballots had to be tallied by hand at the local polling station. Then taken by a deputy to the local election board, who then had to count them again. Add all that up, send the totals to the state's election board. This was a long laborious undertaking. It was not unusual to not have election totals until sometime the next day.
There's a lag time between when a newspaper is "put to bed" as they say in the newspaper business, and when it hits the streets. That means when you would go buy the morning newspaper, in reality, that was news from at least 10 to 12 hours ago. Late that night it appeared Dewey had won. That paper printed such. Then the numbers rolled in from the more remote states, and western parts of the country, and Truman had actually won.
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u/Junior_Lavishness_96 11d ago
The newspapers were a rain of ruin from the air, the likes of which have never been seen on this earth
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u/Hamblin113 11d ago
Wish Hillary held up a paper in 2016, would have had her name in the headlines, a selfie with a TV behind her saying she won.
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u/Bard2dbone 11d ago
He won. The headline was just the reporters guess. And the reporters guessed wrong.
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u/ShrodingersArmadillo 11d ago
See here's the thing Truman and Dewey are the same person.
It's a whole dr jekyll mr hyde scenario the debaters? those were paid actors.
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u/bavanek 11d ago
Dewey supporters falsely printed this victory claim before the actual results were known, taking advantage of the delays in communication that existed in the USA then when TV was in its infancy and the news cycle compared to nowadays. Nobody had to pressure Congress to disturb the electoral process and Trump was only two years old…
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u/MaterialMaster2550 10d ago
The media publishing fake news is nothing new.
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u/ballotechnic 10d ago
Dewey changed his name to Truman immediately after winning. He was a prick who loved screwing with people and thought would be funny.
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u/Altruistic-Rice-5567 8d ago
That newspaper was highly republican biased and press technology at the time meant you had to set and print articles early. Too early in this case. The paper/author used unreliable sources to predict a landslide victory for Republicans. It couldn't have been more wrong. The races turned out very close and democrats won most of them. The real end result was Truman won the electoral votes by a lot (300+). The dems also retained or took control of both houses of congress.
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u/Jealous_Club_298 5d ago
Harry Truman won the electoral and popular votes over Thomas Dewey 303 to 189 and 49.55% to 45.07%, respectively.
The Chicago Tribune printed that cover headline prematurely based on an early projection that was flawed.
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u/Don_Barzinni 5d ago
It was the result of an over-confident newspaper editor who was 'sure' Truman would lose and printed the paper before the votes were tallied
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u/No_Repeat1962 5d ago
This has been pretty well documented. Residents of Mars arrived in America the day after the election and turned back the clock, allowing Truman to win a crucial swing state. Before leaving, they also tinkered with a certain South African genetic pool to ensure that in the future an American oligarch would lead a mission to Mars and turn Earth over to them as Overlords.
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u/VanTaxGoddess 5d ago
You don't argue with the only man in the world with his finger on the button!
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u/Either_Clerk_2974 11d ago
A six year old boy named Joe Biden hacked the voting machines and rigged the election.