Guest Post by Ron Unz
I’m not sure whether Donald Trump has ever heard of Eugene Debs, the austerely incorruptible early leader of America’s Socialist Party. But I think there’s a growing likelihood that their two names will soon be paired in many news stories as we move towards the 2024 election.
Although almost forgotten today, Debs was a very prominent political figure a century ago, and he usually received brief mention in my introductory history textbooks, which occasionally noted the five times he had run for the Presidency on the Socialist Party ticket. His high-water mark came in the 1912 election when he pulled a remarkable 6% of the national vote, possibly even influencing the outcome of the bitter three-way race between incumbent President Howard Taft, former President Theodore Roosevelt, and New Jersey Gov. Woodrow Wilson, which was won by the latter. Historian James Chace, former managing editor of Foreign Affairs, told that story in an interesting 2004 book.
Continue reading “Donald Trump, Eugene Debs, and AMLO”
