Credit: United States Library of Congress's Prints and Photographs division

The vote tallies of the primary election began coming in and it was becoming clear the result some had only dreamed of and many others had feared was about to happen. The old white man with the unruly shock of gray/white hair, the openly avowed Socialist, was about to become the nominee of the Democratic Party. Republicans, terrified of the potential consequences of handing the reins of government to a Socialist, immediately began marshaling their forces for all-out political warfare. Meanwhile, a substantial number of Democrats, equally terrified by the prospect of a way too-far left candidate losing what should have been a slam-dunk election, offered tepid support while exploring other options.

It was 1934 and muckraking author Upton Sinclair was running for governor of California.

It had been nearly 30 years since the publication of his most famous book, The Jungle, in which the depiction of conditions in Chicago’s meat-packing plants were so graphic and so scandalous, it prompted the U.S. government to establish the Food and Drug Administration. He jumped around from one cause to the next, twice ran for governor of California as a Socialist (getting about 50,000 votes each time), and used to love to tell the story about how he had been arrested in 1911 for playing tennis on a Sunday.

In 1933, Sinclair changed his party affiliation from Socialist to Democrat and produced his EPIC (End Poverty In California) plan. The plan, outlined in pamphlets that sold for pennies, took California by storm. He won the Democratic primary in a landslide and since it was held the last week of August, he faced only a two-month sprint to the general election. Early betting lines had Sinclair as a 2-1 favorite. He peppered his appearances with killer quotes like, “It’s hard to get a man to understand something when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

Sinclair’s surge had Republicans reeling. The GOP’s candidate was Frank Merriam, who was the acting governor, having taken the office following the death of James Rolph. Merriam had the personality of a Nebraska zip code and party leaders nixed any ideas of having him debate the erudite and clever Sinclair. To have any chance of stopping the Socialist from taking office, it would require an overwhelming assault and a new form of political attack. The campaign would later be referred to as the birth of media politics.

First to come out against Sinclair were the movie studios, who at first threatened to move their entire operations Back East and then came up with a diabolical approach, the echoes of which expanded a thousand-fold over the following decades and which now play an oversized role in today’s politics. The studios had always produced newsreels that theater owners were forced to run in conjunction with their features. What the studios did to Sinclair, however, was that they produced fake newsreels, the most famous of which showed “bums” (portrayed by studio-hired actors) getting off a train and telling the “interviewer” that they were coming to California to live in the Socialist utopia that Sinclair was going to create for them.

The studios then unilaterally began taking 20 percent of the paychecks of every employee from the top stars down to the janitors and giving the money to the Merriam campaign. James Cagney, who was the No. 1 box-office star at the time, told the studio that if they took any of his money to give to Merriam, he would donate the rest of his pay to Sinclair and campaign for the Socialist, as well. The studio back down.

The newspapers then jumped in. The five newspapers owned by William Randolph Hearst (who had been in Germany courting the newly “elected” Adolf Hitler) had more than half the readership in the entire state and they savagely attacked Sinclair.

President Roosevelt, hoping for a Congressional landslide in November, refused to help the author. The New York Post offered this FDR poem: “This is the question that’s thinning my hair. What’ll I do about Upton Sinclair?”

Others flocked to Sinclair’s aid. Dorothy Parker, the undisputed star of the Algonquin Round Table, was honeymooning in California when a magazine for which she wrote insisted that she return to the East Coast. She replied, “I’m f—-ing busy, and vice versa.”

Late in the campaign, a Progressive Party candidate, Raymond Haight, entered the race, stating that Merriam was a flop and Sinclair was far too radical. Haight ended up winning 14 perent of the final vote, while Sinclair, having been done in by the media campaign, finished 13 percent behind Merriam.

The men who ran Merriam’s media campaign would later mold Richard Nixon’s Red Scare campaign for the Senate in 1950 and then help Ronald Reagan win the governor’s race in the 1960s.

Foreshadowing the reaction of some people today who love their Social Security and Medicare but blanch at the mention of socialism, Sinclair reflected on his failed race with, “The American People will take socialism, but they won’t take the label.”

This article appears in Feb 20-26, 2020.

16 replies on “Danehy”

  1. Many people “love their Social Security” because they are desperate to receive anything back from a lifetime of contributing 15.3 percent of their income and the employer match into a federal slush fund with no guarantee. Talk to a surviving family member where a loved one died in their 50s and received nothing. If a business did that to a investment customer the government would prosecute them for fraud.

    Bloomberg is a joke and Sanders will never win. Socialism is like a cancer constantly hiding and waiting for it’s opportunity to abuse it’s victims.

  2. Christopher’s opinion is spot on. But the rest of those on stage last evening, sans Klobuchar, all have socialist leanings. Democrats, by nature, are socialists.

  4. Thank you MSNBC for last night’s debate. It gave all of us an opportunity to see how Mr Bloomberg fits in amongst the liberal candidates. The whole pack of them looked like the last one picked for dodgeball, waving their little hands in the air and crying uh uh Mista Kotta, I want to talk. And then when they did it was nothing but pure pablum for the ignorant. Nothing they promised is sustainable. At least this time we can’t blame Hillary, it’s the whole party that has fallen apart.

    By the way why would the moderators not talk about the economy, foreign affairs or energy independence? Because they are old scholl socialists that believe in the nanny state controlling everything.

    Ask yourself this:

    https://news.yahoo.com/could-live-170-month-russian-woman-asks-putin-162655335.html

    It is the democratic platform. And by the way the canadian health plan we hear such great things about. It costs each person $7,000 per year and then they have to purchase supplemental coverage to pick up the things that the CHCP does not cover. When they can get around to it.

    Americans are too smart to fall for these Utopian lies.

  5. How soon they forget. In the decades before Social Security, 65% of all American workers (2 out of 3) died in abject poverty. Penniless. Many died in poorhouses or living in relatives attics, etc. Today’s problem isn’t that you’re paying into Social Security. It’s that the federal minimum wage is $7.25 and not $15.00. That affects the entire pay scale, not just those on the bottom. What’s changed over the decades, and hidden with inflation, is that a large percentage of corporate capital has moved from workers wages to management and the owners.

  6. Ask Seattle how the $15 per hour worked for them.

    “You need to make $72,092 a year to live comfortably in Seattle …”

    At least you weren’t shooting for “comfortable.” Seattle still needs subsidies to keep citizens alive.

    In the decades before SS life expectancy was about 45.

    per Cal State Berkely…Life expectancy in the USA, 1900-98
    men and women
    Year M F
    1900 46.3 48.3

    So they worked and died in poverty? Penniless?

  7. Socialism and Pulitzer Tommy go together like salami and provolone. A perfect match. Tommy gets to sit on his fat ass and do nothing all week. Some other poor bastard gets up and works his balls off every day. At the end of the week the working guy hands over enough of his check to Tommy to keep him going. I think that a new name for socialism should be Danehyism.

  8. First, people pay 7.65% of their income into social security and medicare. Their employer pays another 7.65%. It doesn’t cost $7000 for medical care in Canada. But if you can link to a reputable source to support your claim, I’d like to read it.

  9. I found article that claimed $6600 in 2017.-Business Insider Canadian Healthcare costs

    I too thought it was free. Why won’t the media challenge these lies?

  10. The Cost of Health Care in Canada

    Canadians don’t pay directly for their medical care but The Fraser Institute says a typical family will pay $11,000 a year through their taxes for medical care.

    https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/defa…

    Here is the Business Insider Article:

    https://www.businessinsider.com/american-m…

    “While there isn’t a designated “healthcare tax,” the latest data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) in 2017 found that on average a Canadian spends $6,604 in taxes for healthcare coverage.”

  11. 2 weeks in a row I rip Tommy a new one. I get dozens of dislikes but once again no one says a thing to defend him.

  13. I’m your huckleberry, CW13. Since the extent of your “rip” is basically claiming that Tom is on the dole, I’d question whether or not you have any actual intelligence (cool double meaning, here) in regards to that assertion. I’m doubting so and, therefore, also question your assertion of “rip(ping) Tommy a new one,” unless, of course, that means something different than I remember.

  15. Sorry Brad, you lost me. What ever.
    Former Dem. Please don’t show a liberal facts. You’ll screw him all up.

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