Worse, Wallace was an open Soviet sympathizer as VP. Way past Socialist. He was a very odd man and a bit of a flake. Started out as a Republican liberal (his father was an Agriculture Secretary under Harding & Coolidge until his death in 1924). He was still a Progressive Republican when FDR hired him to take his father’s job 9 years later, then switched to the Democrats.
He moved to the far left within a decade by the time he replaced Jack Garner as Vice-President in 1941, but was seen enough as a potential liability for FDR (especially worries over his health that he would not survive another term and didn’t want him in the Presidency) that he was replaced after just 1 term. He was immediately given Commerce Secretary as a consolation prize (not entirely a worthless post, since Herbert Hoover went from it straight to the Presidency). He served only a year and a half before resigning and ginning up a new political party, the ultraleft Progressive that was pro-Soviet. After the drubbing he got, he didn’t return to office, though he gradually moved back to the political center by the 1950s, writing a mea culpa about his leftist stances and by the 1960s, was back to being a Republican again (having endorsed both Ike in 1956 and Nixon in 1960).
To his credit. RINO to commie and back again.
Do you think he would have even won the rat nomination in '48 if he had not been replaced as VP and ended up succeeding to the White House?
“....though he gradually moved back to the political center by the 1950s,...”
Meaning somewhat less Stalinist...