Norman Thomas

Norman Mattoon Thomas (November 20, 1884 – February 1, 1933) was the last President-elect of the old United States, former Representative from New York and Presbyterian Minister. Before he could assume the office of the President, Thomas was assassinated by the Government of National Salvation on the orders of Douglas MacArthur, an event which marked the beginning of the Red May Revolution and the Second American Civil War.

During his life, Thomas espoused views of peaceful revolution and Christian socialism, a fact which distanced him from the dominantly and more radical members of the Workers' Party. His personal popularity and openness to compromise with people outside of the radical left spectrum, including dissatisfied liberals and social democrats. Beloved candidate of the masses and the unifying figure for the American socialist movement, Norman Thomas was compared to the forefather of American socialism Eugene V. Debs. As the result of his tragic death by the hands of counterrevolutionaries, Thomas was described by many researchers as a secular martyr for the American people, especially for the supporters of Democratic–Farmer–Labor Party, who consider themselves as ideological successors to the last President-elect of the Second Republic.

Early years
Norman Thomas was born November 20, 1884, in Marion, Ohio to a family of Presbyterian Minister Weddington Evans Thomas and Emma Williams (née Mattoon). Little is known of Thomas' childhood and adolescence, aside from the fact that he worked as a paper carrier for the Marion Star, an Ohio-based newspaper co-owned by Republican politician Warren G. Harding and Florence Kling Harding.

After he graduated from high school, a pastorate that was accepted by his father allowed Thomas to attend Bucknell University for a year. After leaving Bucknell, he finished his education at Princeton University, graduating magna cum laude in 1905. Among his professors in Princeton was Woodrow Wilson, the future First Secretary of the United States and theorist of the Congressional Government.

In 1905 Thomas helped to establish the Intercollegiate Socialist Society (later renamed to League for Industrial Democracy). Its stated purpose was to "throw light on the world-wide movement of industrial democracy known as socialism."

Norman Thomas' pacifist views and his staunch opposition to the American involvement in World War I brought him to the ranks of the Socialist Labor Party in 1914, which was the biggest political organization that fully objected to the war. When Socialist Labor figure Morris Hillquit made his campaign for mayor of New York in 1917 on an antiwar platform, Thomas wrote to him expressing his good wishes. To his surprise, Hillquit wrote back, encouraging the young minister to work for his campaign, which Thomas energetically did. In 1922 he became co-director of the League for Industrial Democracy.

Electoral politics
In 1927, Norman Thomas was elected to the US House of Representatives from New York City. During his term as a Congressman, Thomas was arrested in 1930 for his role in demonstrations that took place in the Central Park, New York City. After backlash from the American public and free speech marches in major cities, Norman Thomas was soon released.

Presidential campaign
To uproarious applause, Norman Thomas was chosen as the Presidential candidate in the 1932 elections with House Minority Leader Upton Sinclair as his running mate on the Workers’ Party ticket to challenge the incumbent President Herbert Hoover. Considered as something of a black horse candidate, Thomas appealed greatly to supporters of the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party, whom the WCP formed an electoral pact with. In spite of initially dividing opinion within the largely atheistic party, he soon proved a hugely popular and uniting figure among the American public, where even members of the middle class had grown disaffected from the Republican and Democratic parties amidst the catastrophic effects of the Great Depression. The campaign would be fiercely contested, with incumbent Hoover coming to represent the elite's attempts to preserve the old order of the United States in spite of the turmoil and decay it found itself in. Thomas would also be challenged by Democrat Huey Long, governor of Louisiana representing the left-leaning populist wing of the party, and independent fascist candidate and future Nazi war criminal William Pelley, running under the America First banner. Attempts to get Long to drop out of the race in order to form a united pro-capitalist ticket were unsuccessful, and rebuffed by Long himself, who appeared indifferent to wherever the future of America would be capitalist or socialist, even joking about joining the cabinet in the event of a victory for the Workers' Party. In spite of this and the seeming-obvious serious issues facing Hoover's campaign, much of the Republican Party still seemed confident of victory. Polls conducted by the party appeared to indicate a lead for Hoover, with voters focusing on protecting the traditional American way of life. However, their polls had suffered from poor sampling techniques and methodology, with a core sampling strategy based around vehicle registration plates, at a time when most vehicle-owners were wealthy, in addition to poorer vehicle-owners being forced to sell due to economic hardship. Hoover's campaign would go on to emphasize law and order, defending the armed suppression of the Bonus Army marchers taking place contemporarily.

The Republican Party's overconfidence would only lead to greater shock when the election results on November 8 produced a massive landslide for Thomas and the Workers' Party, with Thomas winning 56.7% of the popular vote and 398 electoral college votes. The WCP would also win a majority in the House of Representatives, with them and the DFLP winning over 70% of the vote between them. With unemployment at over 25%, and a 14% contraction in GDP being reported in 1932, the Republicans had seriously underestimated the level of discontent and disillusionment among the American public, even those who were relatively well-off. This would only lead to greater anger from the American right and a more extreme response being taken by reactionaries in the months ahead.